Reprint from Artistic Experimentation in Music - ISBN 978 94 6270 013 0 - © Leuven University Press, 2014

ARTISTIC EXPERIMENTATION IN MUSIC:

AN ANTHOLOGY
Artistic
Experimentation
in Music:
an Anthology
Edited by
Darla Crispin and
Bob Gilmore

Leuven University Press

 Table of Contents

9 Introduction
Darla Crispin and Bob Gilmore

Section I
Towards an Understanding of Experimentation in Artistic Practice

23 Five Maps of the Experimental World

Bob Gilmore

31 The Exposition of Practice as Research as Experimental Systems

Michael Schwab

41 Epistemic Complexity and Experimental Systems in

Music Performance
Paulo De Assis

55 Experimental Art as Research

Godfried-Willem Raes

61 Tiny Moments of Experimentation: Kairos in the Liminal Space

of Performance
Kathleen Coessens

69 The Web of Artistic Practice: A Background for Experimentation

Kathleen Coessens

83 Towards an Ethical-Political Role for Artistic Research

Marcel Cobussen

91 A New Path to Music: Experimental Exploration and

Expression of an Aesthetic Universe
Bart Vanhecke

105 From Experimentation to Construction

Richard Barrett

111 Artistic Research and Experimental Systems: The Rheinberger

Questionnaire and Study Day: A Report
Michael Schwab

5
 Table of Contents

Section II
The Role of the Body:
Tacit and Creative Dimensions of Artistic Experimentation

129 Embodiment and Gesture in Performance: Practice-Based

Perspectives
Catherine Laws

141 Order Matters

A Thought on How to Practise
Mieko Kanno

147 Association-Based Experimentation as an Artistic Research

Method
Valentin Gloor

151 Association and Selection: Toward a New Flexibility in the Form

and Content of the Liederabend
Valentin Gloor

155 Il palpitar del core: The Heart-Beat of the “First Opera”

Andrew Lawrence-King

165 Techno-Intuition: Experiments with Sound in the Environment

Yolande Harris

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 Table of Contents

Section III
Experimenting with Materials in the Processes of Music-Making

179 what if?

Larry Polansky

183 Historical Precedents for Artistic Research in Music: The Case

of William Butler Yeats
William Brooks

195 Cageian Interpenetration and the Nature–Artifice Distinction

Steve Tromans

201 Revisiting Luigi Nono’s Suffered, Serene Waves

Paulo de Assis

213 On Kagel’s Experimental Sound Producers: An Illustrated Inter-

view with a Historical Performer
Luk Vaes

223 Composing as a Way of Doing Philosophy

Nicholas G. Brown

229 Cycles of Experimentation and the Creative Process of

Music Composition
Hans Roels

239 Changing Sounds, Changing Meanings:

How Artistic Experimentation Opens Up the Field of
Brahms Performance Practice
Anna Scott

249 Experiments in Time: Music-Research with Jazz Standards

in the Professional Context
Steve Tromans

259 Ecosonics: Music and Birdsong, Ends and Beginnings

Stephen Preston

7
 Table of Contents

Section IV
Sound and Space: Environments and Interactions

273 Speaking and Singing in Different Rooms: Conceptuality and

Variation in Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in a Room
Paul Craenen

281 Experiment in Practice

Catherine Laws

291 The Virtual Haydn: An Experiment in Recording, Performing, and

Publishing
Tom Beghin

303 On Life Is Too Precious: Blending Musical and Research

Goals through Experimentation
Juan Parra Cancino

311 Interview with Agostino Di Scipio

Hans Roels

319 Kairos in the Flow of Musical Intuition

Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

329 Habitus and the Resistance of Culture

Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

345 Repetition, Resonance, and Discernment

Kathleen Coessens, Henrik Frisk, Malmö and Stefan Östersjö,

361 Intuition, Hexis, and Resistance in Musical Experimentation

Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

369 Appendix 1: Glossary

Anna Scott

379 Appendix 2: Contents of CD

383 Appendix 3: List of online video materials

387 Appendix 4: Resources for Artistic Experimentation

389 Index

393 Notes on Contributors

8
 Introduction
Darla Crispin and Bob Gilmore

This book is an anthology of writings about an emerging area of research: artis-

tic experimentation in music. The paradox implicit in this opening proposi-
tion—can one already confidently make an anthology of texts about so recent
a field of enquiry?—is here answered in the affirmative. The editors believe the
time is ripe for a first gathering of materials from this cross-disciplinary terrain,
which cuts across and between the boundaries of the conventional categories
of performance, composition, historical and critical musicology, performance
studies, musical analysis, reception theory, aesthetics, and much else.
The majority of the thirty-five texts have been written especially for this vol-
ume, and those few that are here reprinted from other sources are all of very
recent vintage. The book is therefore somewhat unconventional in departing
from the traditional concept of the anthology as a collection of texts of dis-
parate origins in time and place. This is, rather, an anthology of the present.
Moreover, the material is united by its common genesis in the work of one par-
ticular institution: the Orpheus Research Centre in Music (ORCiM), in Ghent,
Belgium, founded in 2007 with the explicit aim of addressing questions and
topics at the heart of musical practice, building on the expertise and perspec-
tives of musicians and engaging in dialogue with longer-established research
disciplines. This volume includes material resulting from the most recent
research agenda of ORCiM, currently in its second phase: an exploration of
artistic experimentation in music.
For readers unfamiliar with the aims of ORCiM, a brief explanation might
help to shed light on the nature and scope of this book. ORCiM is an indpen-
dent institution dedicated to artistic research in music. Its Research Fellows
have in common that they are also musical practitioners, and the questions
they explore are ones that emerge from their ongoing musical activity. This
practice often involves activities that range across music and beyond, into the
domains of the visual arts, literature, philosophy, and much else.
ORCiM’s recent focus on artistic experimentation in music, the theme of
this anthology, is an institution-wide project that began in 2010 and is still
continuing. “Experimentation” here should not be taken to refer only to the
twentieth-century development of experimental music: rather, the kind of experi-
mentation described here is an attitude–or perhaps a wide-ranging set of ques-
tions–that can be applied to any sort of music, as the articles on Monteverdi,
Brahms and jazz make clear.
The articles within this anthology, therefore, do not articulate a single view
about what artistic experimentation in music is, or what specific activities it

9
 Introduction

entails. The articulation of a diversity of approaches, and even the uncovering

of tensions, is an important aspect of this collection, given the early stage of
development in the artistic experimentation research trajectory as a whole. This
refusal to delineate an official “ORCiM line” on experimentation goes back to
the wider context of artistic research, within which artistic experimentation is
embedded. Over the past decade, artistic research has developed to the extent
that it is now increasingly accepted as a potential mode of inquiry, especially
within arts training institutions. However, these same institutions are under
increasing pressure to articulate watertight definitions for artistic research,
something that is not entirely viable, given its relative immaturity and complex
nature. Furthermore, any artistic research agenda eliciting homogeneity within
its research outcomes would seem problematic, especially to artists.
ORCiM’s approach to this has been to work on aspects within the frame of
artistic research that seem most relevant to each of its own researchers and
external contributors, and to allow differentiations to stand alongside each
other. This creates a wide horizon of approaches, which are codified in the
Glossary section of this volume, so that variants in terminology can co-exist
within the anthology as a whole while the use of terminology in the individual
articles remains clear. In the longer term, this seems a more practical way to
work toward defining terms for artistic research.
If this book does not provide a simple, one-sentence definition of the con-
cept of artistic experimentation, it nonetheless suggests a number of possible
meanings and understandings, many of them closely interlinked, which are
presented here with the aim of opening discussion and exploration rather
than establishing a new, and arguably unhelpful, set of boundaries. Perhaps
the most obvious of the many possible understandings of the term “artistic
experimentation” is a form of enquiry that differentiates itself from “scientific
experimentation.” But, as becomes clear from the texts in the book, this should
not in any way be taken to imply that artistic experimentation is somehow less
rigorous or less exact than its scientific counterpart, simply that its methods of
enquiry are usually different. Likewise, the term experimentation has, both in
everyday conversation and in professional practice, a range of meanings that
are reflected in the texts here: any attempt to reduce or delimit its meaning
would fail to reflect its use, both actual and potential, by artistic practitioners.
The advent of a research centre such as ORCiM may be regarded as a symp-
tom of the coming to the fore of a particular set of contemporary research ques-
tions. Within the past decade there has been an intensification of intellectual
interest and curiosity concerning the field of musical practice. We want a fuller
understanding of how performances and compositions come into existence,
and what the motives and methods used by musicians in the process of art-for-
mation are. Advanced research in this area goes hand in hand with the gener-
ation of new research languages and media. These are an essential part of the
reliable dissemination of outcomes and outputs based within musical practice.
Propagation of such languages can enfranchise research groups and commu-
nities, and this can enable them to gain credibility in the wider public sphere.
“Artistic research,” as a field of enquiry, has thus emerged to meet the need

10
 Introduction

both for a context in which to situate the questions of artists, and for a con-
ceptual space in which they may experiment with how those questions—and
their answers—might be communicated, whether through writing, speech and
presentation, or through actual compositions and performances themselves.
For all their benefits, however, theoretical approaches present challenges to
their newer, more practically-oriented counterparts. In a world of research in
which publication is paramount, the hegemony of the written word sits uncom-
fortably beside a body of work that does not have its essence in spoken and
written language, but in music itself. The oft-cited metaphorical relationship
between music as a communicative medium and the more specific commu-
nicative properties of spoken and written language should not deceive us into
underestimating just how different are the world-views of those on either side
of this debate. And that itself is a problem: the division of artists and thinkers
into separate territories places restrictions upon how one may work within and
across these areas, and even upon how one may identify oneself as operating
both within the world of research and that of an art practice.
This situation is changing, however. An increasing number of scholar-mu-
sicians are no longer resigned to accepting that the ideological gaps between
practising musicians and those who reflect upon music without performing it
are unbridgeable. Indeed, just as there has been a strong post-millennial strand
that questions the fixation on scrutinising scores and recordings—on treating
musical works as artefacts, rather than events—there has also been a discerni-
ble increase in the number of conservatoire-based teachers interested not only
in pursuing excellence in performance but also in understanding more about
what this excellence might be, and how it is both achieved and recognised.
For such thinkers, the impulse for engaging with research emanates from
the artist’s own questions about their art—its nature and origins, the pro-
cesses through which it comes into being, the nature of its reception, and so
on. Artistic research argues that the questions of the artist, derived through
development of an expert habitus, will be of a different nature from those of
one who has not attained some level of artistic excellence.1 The challenges here
are obvious enough. The first is that an objectivity model in artistic research
cannot function as it purportedly does in other research areas, since the artist’s
questions come through, and are embodied in, his or her unique engagement
with their art: instead of striving toward objectivity, the questions are overtly
and, it could be argued, intentionally hyper-personal and reflexive.
A further challenge comes with the baggage tied up in notions of excellence
and aesthetic value. This is not to say that the world of art is not already shot
through with aesthetic judgements. But these live in the realm of criticism, and
are rarely advanced as adjuncts to a research process. In relation to music, this
is an astonishing state of affairs, since the only kind of widely disseminated,
regularly presented writing on music is criticism. All these different research

1 The concept of habitus, used by Aristotle and reanimated more recently by thinkers such as Mer-
leau-Ponty and Bourdieu, may be taken to refer to the lifestyle, values, and expectations of particular
social groups acquired through the activities and experiences of everyday life.

11
 Introduction

communities need each other, and they need specific research resources and
discourses to enable their fruitful interaction.
Artistic research demands from its exponents high levels of proficiency in
both the intellectual and the practical realms that are relevant to the specific
research areas explored. Since the approaches involved require a high degree
of self-scrutiny and analysis, the challenge to produce research outcomes that
can bear critical scientific and artistic scrutiny is considerable. It requires the
development of tools to inform critically the processes of practitioners, as well
as opening new questions within the established scientific realms of musicol-
ogy and social theory.
It is this critical space that ORCiM has sought to inhabit and explore with an
increasingly precise focus. Its researchers gradually came to the realisation that
working with music—exploring the nature of musical artworks in their pro-
cess of coming into being and attempting to articulate aspects of this—formed
a process that all researchers, each in their own style, could see in common.
Each was involved in a continuous process of trying things out, evaluating the
results of each trial and using these to inform and refine the nature of future
work. ORCiM could be regarded as a metaphorical laboratory for artistic
experimentation.
Through a series of propositions and questions, it became possible to make
a case for the adoption of artistic experimentation as a principal focus for
ORCiM. Some researchers were concerned that the resemblances typically
cited between the arts and the sciences are often superficial, and do not always
offer scope for questions of artistic research. Nonetheless, it could be argued
that a body of successive actions (performances, compositions, etc.) within the
frame of a particular art form can represent a systematic undertaking of acts
of inquiry, with the primary focus of evaluation of the artist’s work being upon
the “experimental” product itself—the artefact. This focus means that cri-
tiques within art and science are directed differently: in science, the critique is
directed back at the hypothesis, and involves the outcome as a means of testing
this hypothesis through replication; in art, the critique is directed at the out-
come, the artefact, and the aim is precisely to avoid replication, since each valid
example of art should somehow be exemplary and sui generis. Therefore, while
the paradigm of science includes the insistence on being able to demonstrate
one’s working, that for artists is to demonstrate an outcome that, while com-
prehensible within a wider tradition or body of consensus, manifests elements
of uniqueness that enable it to be apprehended as a quasi-spontaneous and
transformative experience. Developing an appropriate language of critique
is therefore essential to making progress in promoting artistic research; the
doing and making processes of the artist must progress hand-in-hand with the
development of new language.
Inevitably, in forming a preliminary platform upon which to build a research
focus based on artistic experimentation, more questions arose, many of which
have yet to be answered conclusively. For example, it is by no means clear that
the means by which the artist progresses from work to work can always be seen
as analogous to the scientist’s progression from experiment to experiment. It is

12
 Introduction

also difficult to prove whether, for the artist, the movement is systematic, intu-
itive, opportunistic or random and arbitrary, or some combination of these.
Furthermore, it is not easy to separate the processes driving this movement
in the context of artistic experimentation from those in artistic practice more
generally; and, finally, the functions of aesthetic theory and criticism in the art-
ist’s conception and execution of works of art and how such functions might
change with the focus upon artistic experimentation is not obvious.
ORCiM distilled such concerns into four fundamental research questions
that guided individual researchers and research groups toward more unified
processes of inquiry during the 2010–13 span of its over-arching project in
artistic experimentation:

1. What is the character, function, and potential of experimentation in

musical practice?
2. How does experimentation shape artistic identity and expertise, and
how can it disclose aspects of embodied knowledge?
3. How does artistic experimentation affect the development of musical
practices, both historically and currently?
4. How does artistic experimentation in music relate to other fields of
human activity?

An even more fundamental question lies beneath all these: is it really true that
art is, by its very nature, experimental? In which case, the concept of artistic
experimentation would eventually be perceived as tautologous. Or, is the more
general inquiry within art something more akin to “imaginative invention” or
“mental play,” and, if so, is there a meaningful distinction between this and
an artistic experimentation that might be characterised as freer than its sci-
entific counterpart but more rigorous than artistic practice in general? Might
“the language of invention” be a more helpful substitute for “the language of
experiment”?
It was precisely this friction, the tension in terminologies, which many
ORCiM researchers found inspirational in considering new kinds of discourses
about musical creation. Artistic experimentation became the key phrase at the
heart of a unified research agenda, with researchers finding attraction or pro-
ductive resistance in the multiple connotations of this concept. One possible
understanding of the term, which forms the core contention of ORCiM’s cur-
rent research agenda, is that:

Experimentation is omnipresent in artistic practice and in the processes of music

making. Artistic experimentation encompasses the actions that an artist undertakes
in developing and constantly renewing personal artistic identity and expertise.
Exploring this field has the potential to give greater insight into how art unfolds, and
opens new possibilities for artistic practice and reception.2

2 From an ORCiM brochure on artistic experimentation, Orpheus Institute (2010).

13
 Introduction

This anthology exemplifies this contention. It is organised in four large sections:

1. Towards an understanding of experimentation in artistic practice

Challenging existing discourses in order to create new conceptual
contexts for experimentation within artistic practice
2. The role of the body: tacit and creative dimensions of artistic experimentation
Exploring embodied dimensions of musical practice in order to artic-
ulate significant aspects of tacit knowledge within the creative process
3. Experimenting with materials in the processes of music-making
Creating and evaluating new musical situations and challenging the
frontiers of current and established interactions in performance,
composition, and improvisation
4. Sound and Space: environments and interactions
Exploring environments and previously untried interactions in order
to generate innovative and experimental artistic practices.

The materials and outcomes of ORCiM’s practices of experimentation have

a quality of continuous unfolding; the overlaps in the list show that research
questions can transfer from one domain to another. This quality of non-com-
pletion is certainly one with which many musicians can instinctively identify,
since artworks are under no obligation to offer definitive solutions or comfort-
ing boundaries—indeed, they may be created precisely with a view to exposing
intractable problems and proposing them as matters for reflection, rather than
resolution. The concept of experimentation creates a space for this, but it also
provides some discipline for discussions and for developing new instances of
art making. Important to the ORCiM experimental ethos has been the work
of the philosopher Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, who visited the institute in June
2012 (as documented in the article by Michael Schwab at the end of Section 1).
Several of the authors in these pages make reference, in their individual ways,
to Rheinberger’s ideas–still relatively little-known in English, despite the avail-
ability of translations of much of his most important work.
This anthology thus presents a selection of materials that will continue to
be developed. This reveals ORCiM itself to be an incomplete experiment, but
one with which artist researchers are invited to engage through study of the
writings and the performance examples that follow. With the possible excep-
tion of its four final articles, the anthology is not necessarily meant to be read
sequentially. The Glossary aims to further elucidate the specific terms used
by the authors in their individual contributions, while also highlighting the
important commonalities, differences, and even contradictions between how
artistic researchers understand such vocabularies within the contexts of their
own artistic experimentation activities. Appendix 4, Resources for Artistic
Experimentation, endeavours to assemble those materials used by individual
contributors that are of general relevance to larger questions concerning the
tools, methodologies, spaces, and outcomes of artistic experimentation. The
combined written and audio-visual materials in this anthology (in the form of
the enclosed CD and the online video resources: see Appendices 2 and 3) offer

14
 Introduction

a series of insights into different kinds of practice that can be compared and
contrasted, in order to invite the reader/listener to join the researchers in an
experimental space.
***

In preparing this book the Editors would like to thank Peter Dejans, Director
of the Orpheus Institute, for his unfailing encouragement. Our thanks also
to the many contributors both inside and outside ORCiM; to Anna Scott for
her preparation of the Glossary and the Index; to Juan Parra for preparing the
audio and visual components of this publication; and to Edward Crooks for his
copy-editing. We are grateful also to the efficient staff of the Orpheus Institute
office, especially Kathleen Snyers and Jonas Tavernier, and to all at University
Press Leuven.

15
Section I
Towards an
Understanding of
Experimentation
in Artistic
Practice
This section presents ten articles that outline, in various ways, how the ORCiM
focus upon artistic experimentation creates new conceptual contexts for
understanding how research may be embedded in musical practice. In order to
create a platform for understanding how this works, aspects of the contempo-
rary situation regarding experimentation in the arts are presented. Of particu-
lar importance is the delineation of the difference between the specific cate-
gory of “experimental music,” which has John Cage and James Tenney amongst
its principal exponents, and the broader view of experimentation that is sub-
scribed to by ORCiM, which undoubtedly includes “experimental music,” but
embraces many other aspects of music-making as well.
Certain strands of thought have been emphasised within the ORCiM envi-
ronment, and these are prominently represented in Section 1 of the anthology.
They may be summarised as follows:
The sketching out of a wider context for artistic experimentation, leading us
from the specific aspects of the American Experimental Tradition to a wider
picture of an experimental “world” for the arts, is presented by Bob Gilmore
in the first piece in this section. His “five maps” of the experimental world give
the reader an opportunity for initial orientation, and a chance to relate some of
the novel ideas proposed for artistic experimentation to existing models within
music history.
Within Gilmore’s study is a strong statement about the importance of under-
standing the mediating factors that affect practitioners as they endeavour
to carry out the double role intimated in being an artist-researcher. Clarity
about these mediations is essential for the artist to function effectively in both
worlds. But this presupposes that doing so is entirely viable. Sounding a note
of cautious scepticism, Godfried-Willem Raes reminds readers about both the
difficulty of working as a self-critical observer, and the necessity, in his view, of
retaining institutional differences between research in the arts and that prac-
tised in the wider humanities. He remains to be convinced both that the arts
can escape scientism in appropriating the models of science, and that the insti-
tutions of the humanities can serve the practical needs of the arts.
A potential route out of this dilemma is presented by Michael Schwab, whose
adaptations of specific concepts of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s notion of “exper-
imental systems” have become important themes within the ORCiM enquiry
into artistic experimentation in music. Schwab proposes that many of the com-
municative problems encountered by artists who seek legitimation for their
work as research may be addressed through the vehicle of the “exposition” and,
in particular, through the mode of exposition available as the online Journal for
Artistic Research (JAR).
The potential for exposition as a way to account for multiple trajectories is
explored in more detail by Paulo de Assis, whose exploration of “epistemic com-
plexity” is facilitated by the non-linear thinking that lies behind the approach.
By allowing multiple paths to stand alongside each other, researcher-perform-
ers can re-imagine canonical works as potential sources of new knowledge,
rather than as fixed entities that must be “reproduced.” As Kathleen Coessens
notes, however, there are “right times and right places” for the actions of the

18
artist, however conservative or radical these may be deemed to be; her articles
on “kairos” and on her model of a “web of artistic expertise” explore ways that
allow artistic research to be precisely situated.
In considering such modelling, we are reminded that none of this activity
takes place out of social, political and cultural contexts. Marcel Cobussen
reminds us of the ethical factors that touch artistic research as a whole, and
that should become part of the evolution of a socially responsive and responsi-
ble field of work.
Two later articles in this section contextualise such concerns. They are both
written by composers–Bart Vanhecke and Richard Barrett–and give accounts of
aspects of the authors’ creative processes. Many of the central concerns about
the thoughts and concepts developed as a part of artistic experimentation are
crystallised in these articles. These include whether subjectivity and the musi-
cal imagination can be accounted for within a research context; how thought
processes might elicit both compositional and philosophical exchanges; and
how experimentation and construction may relate to one another.

F i ve M a ps oF the e x per i Men tal W o rld – B o B G ilmo re

In this introductory article, Bob Gilmore outlines five distinct definitions of
the term “experimental,” with the intention of linking these to an enhanced
understanding of the “experimental tradition” in music. In doing so, he deline-
ates the diverse backgrounds from which the ORCiM research agenda on artis-
tic experimentation could be seen as emerging. These include the American
Experimental tradition, Darmstadt, and more recent responses to the ideas of
postmodernity. He also sounds a warning about how quickly experimentation
can lose its core impulse and become merely derivative, and reminds us that
genuinely experimental work must take risks and make provocations.

t he e x po s i ti o n oF p r ac ti c e as r esearc h as e xperi Men tal

s ys te M s – m i c ha el S c hwaB
As a means of underlining the importance of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s notion
of “experimental systems” to many of the research approaches adopted within
ORCiM, Michael Schwab seeks an artistic equivalent to the scientific notion of
“experimentation.” In doing so, he does not limit his search to practices that
may simply have appropriated aspects of experimentation from the sciences,
but looks for examples of experimentation that may be uniquely germane to
artistic practice. He sketches a possible approach to the problem of how the
experiments of art may be reported on by relating this to the concept of “expo-
sition” that he has developed with colleagues in the context of the Journal for
Artistic Research (JAR), of which he is editor-in-chief.

19
 e pi s te M i c c oMplexity an d e xperi Men tal s ysteM s in M u sic
p er F o rM a nc e – P au lo D e a SSi S
Considering musical works as highly elaborated semiotic artefacts, Paulo
de Assis situates different elements involved in music performance (such as
sketches, manuscripts, editions, recordings, and articles) in terms of “epis-
temic complexity.” He suggests that, as a consequence of their highly elabo-
rated nature, musical works seem no longer to have an indisputable ontologi-
cal character (Goehr [1992] 2007; Kramer 2011); their character is now seen as
dependent on their epistemic complexity, contextualisation, and use.

e x p e r i M e n ta l a r t a s r esea r c h –
G o D fr i e D -w i l l e m r a e S
In recent years, the development of a research-oriented competence has
become one of the aims of higher arts education and, like the thesis-based doc-
torate for the sciences, the possession of a qualification that demonstrates this
competence is becoming a fundamental condition for gaining tenure in insti-
tutions of higher education in the arts. But for Godfried-Willem Raes, making
arts education “academic” should not lead to a tendency to link it to, let alone
merge it with, the humanities. The central question remains: what is research
in the arts?

t i ny M o M en ts o F e xperiMen tatio n : K airo s in th e l i Min al

s pac e oF p er Fo r Man c e – K athleen c o eSSen S
This article is concerned with the small gaps—possibilities for experimen-
tation—that emerge in the elaboration, preparation, and performance of a
musician’s act, informed by the background of his or her world of highly skilled
practices, profound training, embodied schemata, and prepared interpre-
tational expression. In the act of performance, in the liminal space between
contingency and the hidden background of artistic practice, “Kairos,” which
Kathleen Coessens translates as the artistic opportune choice of action, can appear
and challenge expected interpretation by opening up the “here and now” of
the performance. Coessens explores the possibilities of Kairos and its manifes-
tations serving as a focus for artistic experimentation.

t h e W eb o F a rtistic p rac tic e : a b ac Kg ro u n d Fo r

e x per i M entatio n – K athleen c o eSS enS
Beyond “inspiration,” all artistic improvisation and experimentation is
enhanced by what Kathleen Coessens calls an “artistic web of practice.” This
web of expertise is both culturally shared and idiosyncratic—thus, specific
for each artist. Coessens explains the ways in which it functions as a kind of
dynamic artistic background, an internalised and integrated whole upon which
the artist relies for his or her creativity.

20
 t oWa r ds a n e thi c a l -p o li tic al r o le For a rtistic r esearc h
– m a r c el c oB uS S en
How can the subaltern—or “the other”—speak? How can she or he be under-
stood without or outside the discursive frameworks, conceptual conventions,
and discourses that we have at our disposal? Marcel Cobussen explores these
ethical questions as a reminder to the reader of some of the social and cultural
contexts of artistic experimentation in music.

a n eW p ath to M us i c : e x periM en tal e xplo ratio n an d th e

e x pr es s i o n o F a n a es th etic u n iverse – B art V an h ec Ke
The term “experimentation in music”—or in the arts in general—is commonly
used in three different senses: it usually refers (1) to innovativeness in artistic
creation, (2) to unpredictability or indeterminacy in procedures or outcomes,
or (3) to experimentation in the scientific sense. In this article, Bart Vanhecke
suggests a different categorisation of artistic experimentation on the basis
of developmental exploration of the idiosyncratic part of an artist’s aesthetic
universe.

F r oM e x per i Mentati o n to c o n stru c tio n – r ic h ar D B arrett

What is meant by “experimental” as it applies to music? Richard Barrett uses
this question to frame an account of the genesis of his piece CONSTRUCTION,
a two-hour composition for voices, instrumental ensemble, and three-dimen-
sional sound installation. This paper was first presented as a keynote lecture
at the ORCiM InternatIonal SemInar 2012: Composition—Experiment—Tradition.

a r ti s ti c r es ea r c h a nd e x periMen tal s yste Ms :

t he r h ei nber ger Q ues ti o n n aire an d s tu d y d ay : a r epo rt
– m i c ha el S c hwa B
This paper is a report and a reflection on a Study Day with the philos-
opher Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Director of the Max-Planck-Institut für
Wissenschaftsgeschichte in Berlin, held at the Orpheus Institute in 2012.
Michael Schwab discusses notions in Rheinberger’s writings such as “exper-
imental system,” “epistemic thing,” and “technical object” (all of which were
developed in the context of his case study on the “discovery” of transfer RNA
and the development of the new field of molecular genetics), and their rele-
vance to artistic research.

21
 Five Maps of the
Experimental World
Bob Gilmore
Orpheus Research Centre in Music

When I was sixteen years old I fell in love for the first time with the music of
an experimental composer. I had no idea he was an experimental composer,
and back then I would have had no clue what that term meant. On the con-
trary, I loved his music because it was Protestant, as I was, because he did crazy
things with hymn tunes, and because his music sounded like New England in
autumn—at least the New England of my imagination—with barn dances and
cider barrels, church bells and marching bands. It was music like no other, and
it made my imagination run wild.1
The composer in question, of course, was Charles Ives. I learned that, depend-
ing on which view you took, Ives was either the first great figure in something
called the American Experimental Tradition, or he was a precursor of that tra-
dition, which began a few decades later with the music of Henry Cowell and his
student John Cage.
From my sixteen-year-old perspective this didn’t make much sense.
Stravinsky at that time seemed to me just as experimental as Ives, possibly more
so, because Stravinsky’s music was so diverse, with so many different languages
and accents and sudden, startling changes of direction, whereas Ives’s music,
visionary and uplifting though it was, basically all sounded the same. Yet no one
called Stravinsky an experimental composer. Insofar as “experimental” meant
anything to me back then, I thought you could apply that word to all my favour-
ite composers—Beethoven, Berlioz, Chopin: they had all experimented with var-
ious elements of music and introduced new things as a result.
Subsequently I heard more music by the composers within the American
Experimental Tradition and was absolutely knocked out by it. Some of it
changed my whole musical life; other parts left me absolutely cold. Thinking
of it as a tradition, however, I found it hard to understand why music historians
insisted that some of these people belonged so closely together. The work of
Harry Partch and that of John Cage, for example, especially their later work, has

1 This article was first presented as a conference paper at the ORCiM International Seminar 2012: Com-
position—Experiment—Tradition, at the Orpheus Institute on 23 February 2012. This slightly revised text
retains something of the informal nature of my spoken presentation.

23
 Bob Gilmore

really nothing in common, and is actually highly antithetical on pretty much

every count. The argument goes that what unites them is their very outsider-
ness in terms of career path and lifestyle, their distance from the mainstream.
Well, maybe: but it doesn’t seem very convincing to define a musical tradition
in terms of kinships based primarily on non-musical considerations. Moreover,
several of the composers supposedly at the heart of the tradition themselves
shunned the word “experimental.” Robert Ashley, in a 1995 CD liner note,
commented that “composition is anything but experimental. It is the epitome
of expertise. It may be aleatoric or purposefully unpredictable in its specific
sounds, or purposefully exploratory of a sound, but experimental is the wrong
word.” Or we find Harry Partch (1974, 357) quoting with approval the exasper-
ation of a famous artist, who protested “You never see my experiments” (my
emphasis).
So we have two things we need to understand if we want to talk about an
“experimental tradition” in music: the word “experimental,” and the word
“tradition.” I think in this case the latter is a good deal easier than the for-
mer, so let’s talk first about “tradition” and then about the question of what
“experimental” in music really means. I would suggest that the American
Experimental Tradition is an example of what the historian Eric Hobsbawm
called an “invented tradition,” a social construct invented by a few (an “elite” of
some kind) to proclaim and to justify the coherence and importance of (in this
case) a certain kind of artistic work and a particular aesthetic, and to differen-
tiate it from other directions, other traditions (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). If
conceived as a role call of names, it makes no sense to me, as many of the com-
posers thus included have arguably less, or certainly no more, in common with
one another than with others outside the tradition.2 But as a description of a
general tendency it may have some validity. Among the first to advance the idea
was John Cage himself, notably in an article entitled “History of Experimental
Music in the United States,” written in the late 1950s and included in his first
book, Silence, in 1961. In that text he doesn’t actually use the phrase “experimen-
tal tradition,” but that is essentially what he’s talking about. (The phrase crops
up a year or two later in writings by the American musicologist Peter Yates;
there may be even earlier examples.)
In that article Cage offers not one but two definitions of the term “experi-
mental.” And there are others: I can think of five plausible and reasonably dis-
tinct definitions of the term “experimental,” which I’d like to outline briefly.
There may be more than five, and I’m certainly interested in the possibility of a
sixth. These are definitions of, and perspectives on, what I will call “the exper-
imental world” (with a nod to the sociologist Howard Becker [1982]), and they
will hopefully provide us with ways of navigating that complex and sometimes
daunting terrain.

2 The “experimentalist” Nancarrow’s friendship with the decidedly “uptown” Elliott Carter belies the
simplistic pigeonholing of Nancarrow’s music as merely “experimental” (see Stojanović-Noviçić 2011).

24
 Five Maps of the Experimental World

o ne a nd tW o

The two definitions Cage provides in his “History of Experimental Music in

the United States” are quite different, so I’ll call them the “soft” and the “hard”
definitions. The soft definition holds that to be experimental involves “the
introduction of novel elements into one’s music” (Cage 1959, 73). As examples
of this practice, Cage points to the music of many of the composers now con-
sidered part of the American Experimental Tradition, including Carl Ruggles,
Leo Ornstein, Dane Rudhyar, Alan Hovhaness, Lou Harrison, Henry Brant,
Ruth Crawford, Gunther Schuller, Harry Partch, and Virgil Thomson. But he
feels about their music the way he does about that of Charles Ives, about whom
he remarks that “much of Ives is no longer experimental” (70). (Logically, the
“novel elements” after a time cease to be “novel.”) This is the first of my five
definitions: “the introduction of novel elements into one’s music.”
Cage’s “hard” definition has become justly famous. In it he says that an exper-
imental action is “an action the outcome of which is not foreseen” (69). He goes
on to relate this to his own work with chance operations and, more essentially,
to “composing in such a way that what one does is indeterminate of its perfor-
mance.” He tells us that this type of experimental music is what he now does,
what his teacher Henry Cowell sometimes did, and what a few of his younger
friends do, notably Earle Brown, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff (69–71).
This is the second of my definitions, and it can be applied also to the work—or
some of the work—of many composers since Cage. Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in
a Room (1969), by this second definition, is a classic example of an experimental
composition. What will happen to the playback of the voice recording, as it is
re-recorded and played back again and again, is entirely dependent on the par-
ticular acoustics of the room in which the performance takes place: the sonic
outcome is unpredictable.

t hr ee
Within the optimistic climate of the late 1950s, when “History of Experimental
Music in the United States” was written, Cage apparently had little need to feel
that his experimental work had solid historical roots, and was more concerned
to differentiate it from the work of those earlier Americans, the “soft” experimen-
talists. But he did like the feeling that certain younger contemporaries were
keen to share his endeavour. Things were very different with the composer who
is in a way Cage’s natural successor in the next generation, James Tenney. One
of the recurrent themes of Tenney’s output is an engagement with the work of
others, especially older composers, and the majority of his compositions bear
dedications to a wide range of them whose work he admired. This is as true of
early Tenney pieces like Quiet Fan for Erik Satie of 1970 and Spectral CANON for
CONLON Nancarrow of 1974 as it is of his later works, which bear dedications
to, among others, Varèse, Cowell, Ruggles, Partch, Wolpe, Cage, Xenakis, and
Feldman; to friends and contemporaries like Harold Budd, Pauline Oliveros,
Nam June Paik, Steve Reich, and La Monte Young; and to older figures that he
himself had never known personally, like Ives, Crawford, and Scelsi. All these

25
 Bob Gilmore

composers, of course, are “experimentalists” in (at least) Cage’s soft definition.

Tenney’s ongoing need, his whole life, to invoke these composers in the titles
and dedications of his pieces has an aspect of “safety in numbers,” forming a
link to this invented tradition. He strove, in his work as well as his life, to under-
stand where these experimenters—these pioneers—were leading, and to sup-
port them by helping to colonise the new terrain they had uncovered.3
For Tenney, the idea of an American Experimental Tradition was a living
reality, one to which he felt a strong sense of belonging. But Tenney had his
own definition of “experimental,” which is different from either of those I men-
tioned by Cage (whom Tenney regarded as an important mentor and friend).
Tenney believed that “experimental” in music should mean more or less what
it does in the sciences. The composer would write a piece of music, try cer-
tain things out, then judge whether they worked, didn’t work, or only partly
worked, then in the next piece that experiment could be followed up: like a
scientist, one could go further down the same line. “I guess all of my music can
really be called experimental,” he told an interviewer, “but in a sense differ-
ent from how John Cage uses the word, and a bit different from how it’s been
used to describe the experimental tradition . . . It’s more literally an experi-
ment, like a scientific experiment, and in science, in scientific work, one exper-
iment always does lead to another one” (Tenney, Kasemets, and Pearson 1984,
10). The etymology of the word experiment links it to the Old French esperment,
meaning a trial or test, but which also had the sense of “practical knowledge.”
In other words, Tenney’s is the concept of composition as research. By analogy
to a research scientist, a composer could test or verify a hypothesis through
the medium of music. This definition seems more inclusive and in a way more
generous than either of Cage’s two, because by Tenney’s definition composers
like Carl Ruggles or Ruth Crawford, say, with their explorations of dissonant
counterpoint, could be considered as doing research, since a new composition
would be at least partly an experiment into a specifiable aspect of music that
was being tested. Moreover, Tenney’s own interest in picking up their explo-
rations of dissonant counterpoint in some of his own later works (for exam-
ple in the Diaphonic Toccata and Diaphonic Study, both from 1997) continues the
experiment, and reinforces the idea of an ongoing experimental project across
generations, something that Cage’s “soft” definition—with its emphasis of the
transitory nature of “novelty”—does not acknowledge.

F o ur
There was an interesting exchange after a lecture Tenney gave at Darmstadt in
1990. When the then-young composer Daniel Wolf asked him what advice he
would give a young composer operating within what Wolf called a “post-exper-
imental model,” Tenney replied: “There is no such thing as post-experimen-
tal . . . My sense of ‘experimental’ is just ongoing research.” Tenney couldn’t

3 CD, track 7, features Tenney’s Harmonium #1 (1976), dedicated to Lou Harrison, in a live performance by
Trio Scordatura at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent, 3 October 2013.

26
 Five Maps of the Experimental World

accept the concept of “post-experimental”: to him, just as there was no end

to the musical experiments we could imagine, so there would always be such a
thing as composition-as-research as long as there was such a thing as composition.
We might ask exactly what Wolf meant by “post-experimental” (remembering
that this particular exchange took place more than twenty years ago). “Post-
experimental”—with its resonance of terms like “post-tonal,” “post-serial,”
“post-minimal”—implies that experimentalism is a historically bounded phe-
nomenon, a period of music history that has now passed, or nearly so. Wolf ’s
term reinforces the idea of experimentalism as an invented tradition, a his-
torical construct with its own particular history and ideology. So here comes a
fourth definition: that “experimental” refers to a type of music of a particular
historical era, essentially, if not quite exclusively, the music of the fifties, sixties,
and seventies stemming from Cage’s “hard” definition—such things as Alvin
Lucier’s music for brainwave phenomena, David Tudor’s forest of electron-
ica, the indeterminate scores of Earle Brown, Christian Wolff, and Cornelius
Cardew, and much else.
This is important as we need to remember that the whole idea of an “exper-
imental tradition” does not happen by itself but must be constructed in various
places and by various individuals. Perhaps ironically, for a tradition with such
strong American roots, one of the most important of those places was West
Germany, especially in the years between the end of World War II and the
collapse of the Berlin Wall. The musicologist Amy Beal has shown in her bril-
liant book New Music, New Allies (2006) how it was overwhelmingly this kind of
American music, the “experimental” rather than the more symphonic kind,
that was seen as the most important by a number of new music festival direc-
tors, composers, and critics from the 1950s right through to the 1980s (and
beyond). A number of young American composers in those years made their
names, and a sizeable part of their incomes, in Europe, using their successes
there to try to boost their profile back home.
Going further, and following the ideas of the sociologist Howard Becker in his
book Art Worlds (1982), we must remember that an experimental music “world”
(or, more colloquially, an experimental music “scene”) has to be constructed
through a dynamic relationship between agents and mediating factors. If the
agents in this case have mostly been the composers themselves, the mediat-
ing factors comprise a complex network of festivals, foundations, academic
institutions, venues, private patrons, performers, publishers, publicists, critics,
musicologists, and so on. Collectively this network sustains, ideologically and
practically, the idea of an experimental scene, or an experimental tradition, by
boosting the dissemination and consumption of this music. Financially, the
experimental scene has always been sustained by a mixture of institutional and
foundation support and, crucially, by support from private patrons. Probably
the earliest such individual to support experimental music (at least in defini-
tions numbers one and three) was none other than Charles Ives who, begin-
ning in the late 1920s, funded Henry Cowell’s New Music Edition of scores
and recordings (Swafford 1996, 368). Later, from the 1960s onwards, a great
many experimental composers, especially on the West Coast, benefited from

27
 Bob Gilmore

the largesse of the late Betty Freeman, including Partch, Lou Harrison, Steve
Reich, Peter Garland, John Cage, and others. Many of the great experimen-
tal music studio spaces, like Phill Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia in New
York, Walter Zimmermann’s Beginner Studio, or Johannes Fritsch’s Feedback
Studio, both in Cologne, would never have survived as long as they did if they
were purely dependent on institutional funding. In other words, all this and
more is necessary to create an “experimental scene,” after which it is possible,
arguably, to be “post-experimental.”

F i ve
Another important component in the creation of an experimental “world” has
been scholarship. One of the first and still one of the most influential books to
discuss the subject was Michael Nyman’s Experimental Music, written in the 1970s
and reprinted, largely unchanged, in 1999. There he says, in essence—and here
is my fifth and final definition—that “experimental” is all the interesting new
music that isn’t avant-garde. Avant-garde music, Nyman argues—the music of
Stockhausen, Berio, Boulez, and others—derives from the great traditions of
western music, whereas experimental music does not, and comes from other
sources, including non-literate (or perhaps post-literate) ones. So this is an ide-
ological and even a political distinction. This would not be a bad rule-of-thumb
definition of what experimental music is were it not for the large amount of
interesting music that lies in the grey area between the two. If we divide the
world into avant-garde and experimental, where do we place a composer like
Feldman? Or Xenakis—does his music really derive from the “great traditions
of western music”? Or how about this: compare Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique for
100 metronomes (1962) with Alvin Lucier’s Clocker for amplified clock, per-
former with galvanic skin response sensor, and digital delay system (1978). They
are somewhat similar concepts, both problematising time-keeping devices of
different kinds, and the sound of each, while distinct, has a lot in common: one
piece might quite easily be mistaken for the other by a listener who did not
know them particularly well. So do we think Ligeti’s piece is avant-garde and
Lucier’s experimental? And if so, isn’t this not so much because of the way they
sound or the way they’re made but because we’re familiar with the rest of the
two composers’ outputs?
We live at a time when “experimental music” is thriving. There are scenes,
in different places; there are venues, websites, record labels, and ensembles
devoted to this kind of music—or, more accurately, these kinds of music. But
there are of course drawbacks, in that once a “scene” is in place quite a lot that
can flourish within it loses sight of the original impulse that led to its creation.
Some of what gets called and packaged as experimental music today seems to
me not really experimental because, paradoxically, it fits neatly within now-fa-
miliar techniques and practices of the experimental tradition. Genuinely
experimental work, the work that takes risks and asks provocative new ques-
tions about method, material, working practices, and everything else, remains
as rare and as precious as ever.

28
 Five Maps of the Experimental World

Nonetheless, experimental work in my own preferred definition, that of

Tenney (definition number three), is alive and well, and thriving in the music
of the younger generation. As regards the work of older composers, I’m of the
opinion that some music is inherently, not temporarily, experimental. Let’s put
it this way: it’s hard to imagine a time when pieces like Conlon Nancarrow’s
Study for Player Piano no. 33 (? late 1960s) which explores the rhythmic propor-
tion of two in the time of the square root of two, will ever not be considered
experimental. And there is still plenty of virgin territory out there. It seems to
me that the maps of the experimental world are not—and perhaps, as James
Tenney believed, never will be—complete.

References
Ashley, Robert. 1995. Untitled liner note for Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
“Robert Ashley: Superior Seven and Tract.” First published 1974 (London: Studio
New York: New World Records, NW Vista).
80460. Partch, Harry. 1974. Genesis of a Music. 2nd ed.
Beal, Amy C. 2006. New Music, New New York: Da Capo Press.
Allies: American Experimental Music in Stojanović-Noviçić, Dragana. 2011. “The
West Germany from the Zero Hour to Carter-Nancarrow Correspondence.”
Reunification. Berkeley: University of American Music 29 (1): 64–84.
California Press. Swafford, Jan. 1996. Charles Ives: A Life with
Becker, Howard S. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley: Music. New York: W. W. Norton.
University of California Press. Tenney, James. 1990. “Darmstadt Lecture
Cage, John. 1959. “History of Experimental 1990.” In From Scratch: Collected Writings,
Music in the United States.” In Silence: edited by Larry Polansky, forthcoming.
Lectures and Writings, 67–75. Middletown, Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961. Tenney, James, Udo Kasemets, and
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, Tina Pearson. 1984. “A Tradition of
eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Experimentation: James Tenney in
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Conversation with Udo Kasemets and
Nyman, Michael. (1974) 1999. Experimental Tina Pearson.” Musicworks 27 (Spring):
Music: Cage and Beyond. 2nd ed. 10–11.

29
 The Exposition of
Practice as Research as
Experimental Systems
Michael Schwab
Orpheus Research Centre in Music; Royal College of Art, London;
Zurich University of the Arts

Over the last few years, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s theory of “experimental

systems,” which he has developed in relation to the empirical sciences and
molecular biology in particular, has gained currency in debates around art
and research. While Rheinberger (2007, 2009, 2012a, 2013) acknowledges that
a comparison between the advance of art and that of science may be made,
it is striking that, in the literature to date, no coherent picture has emerged
as to how his theory may productively be employed in this context. Authors
who focus on the notion of “experimentation” seem to limit their discussion
to practices that conceptually, materially, or aesthetically make reference to
the sciences, failing to address the remaining practices in terms of experimen-
tation (e.g., in Friese, Boulboullé, and Witzgall 2007). Authors who focus on
epistemological implications may identify “epistemic things” in general within
artistic practice, while failing to account for the specificity of experimentation
in this context (e.g., Borgdorff 2012a).
My recently published multiauthor book Experimental Systems: Future Knowledge
in Artistic Research (Schwab 2013a) tries to assemble more voices between those
positions, since, when looking at art’s own epistemological concerns, it is vital
to find an artistic equivalent to a scientific notion of “experimentation” and
not limit this search to practices that may simply have appropriated aspects
of experimentation from the sciences. Artistic practices outside “experimen-
tal art” or “experimental music” in fact may share an epistemological project
with experimental science without having any obvious relationship to it. In this
short text, I aim to sketch a further possible approach to this problem by relat-
ing Rheinberger’s notion of “experimental system” to the concept of “exposi-
tion” that my colleagues and I have developed in the context of the Journal for
Artistic Research (JAR), of which I am founding editor-in-chief.1

1 The relationship between “experimentation” and “exposition” suggested in this chapter will be further
investigated as part of my contribution to Paulo de Assis’s ERC-funded research project “Experimentation
versus Interpretation: Exploring New Paths in Music Performance in the Twenty-First Century” (2013–17).

31
 Michael Schwab

W r i ti ng
Regarding experimentation, the link between laboratory science and an aca-
demic publishing project may not be immediately obvious if one does not
understand, as Rheinberger (2012b, 90) does, experimentation as a process of
writing, or, to be more precise, as a “writing game” where an experimental sys-
tem known as “graphematic space” produces “graphemes”2 (Rheinberger 1997,
105–8; 1998). An emphasis on writing is also supported by the analysis of “labo-
ratory life” made by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar (1986), who find a “strange
mania for inscription” (48) where “the laboratory [takes] on the appearance
of a system of literary inscription” (52). Research carried out by Steven Shapin
and Simon Schaffer on Robert Boyle’s invention of the air pump—and with it,
experimental science—may further support such claims due to the importance
of “literary technology,” where “the text itself constitutes a visual source” rather
than simply offering “the narration of some prior visual experience” (Shapin
and Schaffer 1985, 61; Shapin 1984).
One may, however, argue that Rheinberger’s (1997, 106) explicitly Derridean
approach, in which he differs from Latour, allows him to situate writing in the
experimental object itself, outside its production through measuring devices,
from which it is nevertheless not independent (ibid., 111). When focusing on
these devices, one runs the risk of assuming the existence of material from
which the device simply produces text through measurement and transcrip-
tion, a position that does not take into account that such an assumption may
actually be the result of experimentation itself. With Derrida, however, one
has to argue that the material as it appears in an experimental system (the
experimental object) is already part of a writing game and thus dependent on
“arche-writing . . . as the condition of all linguistic systems” (Derrida [1976]
1997, 60). As Rheinberger (1997, 111) says, quoting Latour and Woolgar (1986,
51) and Latour (1987, 64–65), “It is thus unnecessary to distinguish between
machines that ‘transform matter between one state and another’ and appa-
ratuses or ‘inscription devices’ that ‘transform pieces of matter into written
documents.’”3
A focus on Derrida thus relaxes the link between writing and measure-
ment and opens up the possibility for a writing practice manifested not in
numbers but in “scribbles” (Rheinberger 2010a, 244–52), in “preparations”
(ibid., 233–43), and also in the experimental object itself, which “is a bundle
of inscriptions” (Rheinberger 1997, 111; emphasis in the original). However, as
Rheinberger (ibid., 28) writes, experimental systems “inextricably cogenerate
the phenomena or material entities and the concepts they come to embody.”

2 The notion of “grapheme” usually refers to the smallest semantic unit of written text. Rheinberger
extends the term to also include material traces that emerge from an experimental system, applying
Derrida’s Of Grammatology ([1976] 1997) to empirical science.
3 While Rheinberger (1997, 77–78) acknowledges the tacit dimension, one needs to see the body as com-
plicit in writing rather than as yet another “inscription device” that produces text, in this case, through
experience. It is the materiality of the body rather than the subjectivity of either artist or audience that
is relevant to an experimental approach to embodiment. Neither device (explicit) nor body (implicit)
can have authorship in an experimental system conceived as writing space.

32
 The Exposition of Practice as Research as Experimental Systems

Thus, following Rheinberger, inscriptions take place simultaneously in two

spaces: the material, graphematic space and the representational space of
science.4
There is no space in this short chapter to discuss Rheinberger’s theory in
detail, in particular his notion of the “epistemic thing” as the guise in which
new knowledge enters the (experimental) scene. For the purpose of this text,
it is sufficient to point out the deeply differential nature of experimental sys-
tems where “experimenters are not interested in identities; they proceed in the
search for ‘specific differences’” (Rheinberger 1997, 79).5 Naturally, research
has to be focused on such specific differences, since by definition new knowl-
edge will differ from what is known already. In this sense, “method” may be
doubted as crucial for substantial progress in research—as it was famously by
Paul Feyerabend in his book Against Method (1988)—since “method” to some
degree predicts the outcome.6 Following Derrida’s approach, this doubt needs
to be extended to the source material on which experimentation takes place;
possible preconceptions about dormant properties in a material will limit what
might emerge, requiring the “dislocation” (Rheinberger 1997, 82) of those pre-
conceptions. It is thus crucial to Rheinberger (ibid., 81) that “an experimen-
tal arrangement must be managed in such a way that it keeps being governed
by difference. I use the term difference to characterise the specific, displacing
dynamics that distinguishes the research process.”
Writing is nothing but this dislocation, displacement, or deferral, to intro-
duce yet another, this time more temporal, Derridean term.7 Something needs
to re-emerge as different during the process of writing (or experimenting, for
that matter), regardless of whether this alteration is caused by the material at
hand or by the experimental approach that is employed. After the fact of writ-
ing, what is given has reshaped its own origin as if what is given now has always
been given, as if no difference ever occurred. To explain the naturalness with
which this process takes place, Shapin (1984) borrows Robert Boyle’s notion of
the “matter of fact” (in opposition to “matter of law”) that is produced through
an experiment, where, with the help of a highly artificial construct (the experi-
mental apparatus), facts emerge that are beyond doubt, like nature itself. This
paradoxical situation makes it difficult to question whether what has emerged
in the experiment was, in fact, the cause and origin for precisely this emer-
gence. Deconstruction, which cannot be called a method following the above

4 For a discussion of the relationship between the graphematic and the representational space see
Schwab (2013b, 7–9)
5 Rheinberger here makes reference to Robert B. Loftfield, a researcher interviewed in Rheinberger’s
case study.
6 The questioning of “method” appears to be particularly strong in artistic research, where nobody seri-
ously believes that artistic research practice can be explained as sets of methods (see Slager 2009; Miles
2012).
7 According to Derrida, différance governs both difference in space and time as “the becoming-time
of space and the becoming-space of time” (Derrida 1982, 8). In effect, the position from which all
differences (space) may be assessed needs to be deferred into the future (time) since the position would
otherwise be part of what it tries to assess. This is the reason why according to Rheinberger (quoting
François Jacob), experimental systems are “machines for making the future” (Rheinberger 1997, 28).

33
 Michael Schwab

(cf. Gasché 1986, 121), is Derrida’s attempt to bring back into the discourse
what that same discourse expels in its formation (cf. Schwab 2008b).8

p ubli s hi ng
Focusing on the role of formation, Rheinberger argues that in an experimental
system “the scientific object is shaped and manipulated ‘as’ a traceable confor-
mation” (Rheinberger 1997, 111). However, since the scientific object is con-
ceived as a “bundle of inscriptions,” and since those inscriptions are made both
in the graphematic and in the representational space, there is always a public
dimension even to what happens on the presumably private space of a scien-
tist’s workbench. One may thus say that the transformation of a material object
is strictly speaking also a publication activity, if the term “publication” were not
limited—as it usually is—to the production of conventional text, illustrated or
not.
Interpreting transformational activities as publication is perhaps easier to
accept if one follows Latour and places “series,” “chains,” or “cascades” of trans-
formation between the poles of “world” and “language,” which he illustrates
with the example of a field trip to the Amazon rainforest. In his understand-
ing, material is transformed from its local, particular, material, multiple, and
continuous pole through such chains into a form of “compatibility, standard-
isation, text, calculation, circulation and relative universality” in a movement
that he calls “upstream” and “amplification” (Latour 1999, 70–71). Crucially, in
his understanding, if meaning is to be retained, it must be possible to retrace
those transformations (downstream): “To know is not simply to explore, but
rather it is to be able to make your way back over your own footsteps, follow-
ing the path you have just marked out” (ibid., 74). In this way, an inner link is
provided between knowledge encoded in (academic) writing and in material
objects without any formal correspondence, where the one need not resemble
the other.
This resonates with Henk Borgdorff ’s (2012b, 197–98) understanding that an
experimental space is already a space of publication. According to Borgdorff,
publication is not something that is done after the experiment has been con-
ducted, as is the writing-up of its results; rather, publication is always already
taking place in experimental systems. While publication may appear to be sec-
ondary in the sciences, it cannot be so in art. Artworks are not simply “writ-
ten-up”—that is, they are not published results, where the work happened
somewhere else—they are engaged from the outset in the work of publication.
With reference to Rheinberger’s quotation (above), during “the shaping of an
object as traceable conformation,” the “as” indicates a differential redoubling,

8 In Schwab (2008a, 217) I argue with reference to Winfried Menninghaus (1987) that, with decon-
struction, Derrida’s emphasis remained on the critical rather then the formative side of discourse.
Rheinberger’s work on experimental systems that trace the formation of new objects in the context of
experimental science shifts the balance and brings Derrida’s thinking in closer proximity to processes
of creation, which in books such as The Truth in Painting (1987) is still largely an exercise of interpreta-
tion.

34
 The Exposition of Practice as Research as Experimental Systems

where difference is inscribed as identity—a differential process that makes

an identity (the scientific object) manifest a posteriori.9 Likewise, the notion of
“exposition” that the Journal for Artistic Research employs to describe its format
of publication is defined as “the exposition of practice as research,” where,
through forms of exposition rather than documentation, an artistic object’s
(epistemic) identity is made manifest (see Schwab 2011, 2012a). Crucially, in
terms of form, such an exposition need not resemble what it exposes, since
what is exposed may have been transformed during the process. Mika Elo
(2008, 1) even insists on such formal difference in terms of media when he says
that “one essential task of the artist/researcher is to provide well-articulated
passages between different media while maintaining high sensitivity to their
mediality.”
Although the concept was touched upon by others around the same time
(e.g., Sullivan 2005; Lesage and Busch 2007; Barrett and Bolt 2007), Katy
Macleod and Lin Holdridge were the first to focus on the importance of the
“as”-construct in the context of artistic research. In the introduction to their
book Thinking Through Art: Reflections on Art as Research (2006), they borrowed
the concept from an essay by Steven Melville (2001) published in the catalogue
to the exhibition “As Painting: Division and Displacement” at the Wexner
Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. As the exhibition’s title suggests, here
too one finds emphasis on difference, but also on the role of material (in this
case painting) that is not dissimilar to Rheinberger’s approach. Melville sum-
marises his argument very persuasively when he says:

1. Matter thinks. “Thinks” here evidently means “makes a difference,”

so the proposition is that matter gives itself over to difference or to a
process of difference.
2. This process must be grounded in matter opening itself to sense
through some interruption of its apparent absolute continuity with
itself; the ground of thought is something like a cut or fold, a moment
of delay or excess, in which substance refigures itself as relation.
3. Because thought taken this way is above all articulation, matter is not
conceivable apart from language and the structure of difference to
which it gives particularly compelling expression. There is no percep-
tion and so no visibility that is not also a work of articulation. (Melville
2001, 8)

It is through this move that Macleod and Holdridge (2006, 12) can, at the end
of their introduction, call for the “need to bring our writing nearer to our mak-
ing”; however, despite their best efforts, it still seems unclear “how research
artwork might be more fully understood” (ibid., 6). While, as facilitated by the
recourse to Melville, the philosophical underpinning seems to be in place,
their book is not yet able to overcome the academic framework and its lim-

9 This historical dimension is an epistemological necessity, which in turn requires one to “historize
epistemology” (Rheinberger 2010b).

35
 Michael Schwab

ited understanding of writing: the implications of Melville’s thinking are only

partially developed. This in turn prevents a full understanding of “research art-
work” as (material) writing practice that academia can assess as text.
Comparing this situation with Rheinberger’s thinking, the crucial missing
element in the creative field is no longer the academic framework that insti-
tutionally locates “research,” since this has been increasingly developed since
the 1990s (for the UK see, for example, Candlin 2001); rather, what is miss-
ing is a conceptual framework that delivers writing as practice, akin to what
Rheinberger in his scientific domain calls “experimental system.” Between
material practice and scientific discovery, with “experimental system” he traces
a concept that protects and formulates the material writing space, not in radi-
cal opposition to academia, but as a differentiation and localisation of those of
its practices that deliver what it can know.
Likewise, within the creative fields, with the notion of “exposition” a concept
has been established that is currently being tested in relation to both its quality
as writing, which can interface with academia, and its acceptance by research-
ers in the various disciplines in relation to its usefulness. While the outcome of
this process is still open, I would at least like to try to sketch how the exposition
of practice as research may be set in place to deliver a space comparable to that
of experimental systems.
Importantly, the term “exposition” is arbitrary.10 Alternative terms may be
used, as long as they facilitate a similar redoubling as introduced above. For
example, one may speak of “the performance of practice as research” or “the
staging of practice as research.”11 Whatever notion is used, however, it seems
to be important for this notion to be defined by a specific practice, that is, by
that within which difference is made. Although developed in the context of the
Journal for Artistic Research, because of this very general definition “exposition”
transgresses the very limited confines of academic publishing and emerges as a
fundamental part of any research practice.
The exposition of practice as research is not limited with regard to its form;
it may occur in any context—such as journal publications, conferences, con-
certs, exhibitions, or even during teaching sessions—while within those con-
texts, exposition may occur in any medium or form.12 As argued by Tom Holert
(2009), who discusses artistic research in more general terms, “exposition” may
be a (late) consequence of “talk” entering the studio when, after the Second
World War, academies were reformed to accommodate contextual studies that
would influence the formation of “critical practice” (see also, Candlin 2001).

10 Having been instrumental in the development of this concept, I concede that part of this particular
choice has to do with my own artistic roots in photography, where, for instance, an image emerges
through exposure.
11 Further notions that are suggested are the translation, the reflection, the unfolding, the exhibiting, or
the curating of practice as research (Schwab 2012b, 342–43).
12 It cannot be assumed, for instance, that text is by definition more expositional that an artistic presenta-
tion, although it may be so.

36
 The Exposition of Practice as Research as Experimental Systems

In general, “exposition” may be defined as the discursive supplementation

of practice that can allow for the emergence of different identities of this
practice. While practice may be exposed as research, it may also be exposed,
for example, as political action (e.g., Daniel Buren), as commercial activity
(e.g., Andy Warhol), or simply as life (e.g., Joseph Beuys). As I argue elsewhere
(Schwab 2012a), such a notion of exposition makes it necessary to distinguish
between first- and second-order art-making, since it cannot be assumed that
all art engages in such notions of writing, particularly not with the paradigm
of research. In that text, I reserve the expression “first-order art-making” for a
more conventional conception of artistic practice, whereas I use “second-or-
der art-making” to indicate artistic practice as writing, in which one may see
art’s embrace of secondary formats that engage in difference or even différance
(Öberg 2010, 14–15) as a means to self-define a practice without relation to
discipline or similar external frames that can be used to construe the iden-
tity of that practice.13 As a consequence, rather than judging by fixed criteria,
the assessment of artistic research, as it is done, for instance, in the Journal
for Artistic Research, may focus on a submission’s expositionality and the way it
engages difference to produce “epistemological gain” by allowing reviewers to
retrace the transformational relationships that are set up in it.14
As indicated in the domain of scientific experimentation by Boyle’s notion of
the “matter of fact,” in art too, the level at which those tracings operate needs
to be within the material itself while signalling traceability, that is, intelligibil-
ity. However exciting (or not) it may be, if evidenced in the material, an artistic
proposition must be beyond doubt, since what it presents is part of the mate-
rial’s potential even if it is unexpected, unusual, or unprecedented. It is this
aspect that allows one to suggest, with Melville, that “matter thinks,”15 not as a
primary cause for artistic research but as a result of its artistic exposition, which
shares with experimentation a dedication to its own practice-base.

13 There is no space to elaborate on this here, but one could argue for a definition of “modern art” as
first-order art-making and “contemporary art” as second-order art-making. See Aranda, Wood, and Vo-
dokle (2010) for an investigation into “What is Contemporary Art?” and Osborne (2013) for the relation
between contemporary art and postconceptual art practice.
14 “Epistemological gain” is a concept that Isabelle Graw introduces in her book High Price (2009) in order
to speak about the (priceless) value of art. In my understanding, “epistemological gain” needs to be
reserved for art that exposes itself as research.
15 The suggestion that objects, and in particular artworks, may “think” is rapidly gaining currency. While
in their book The Literary Absolute, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy (1988, 115) speak of
a “subject-work” to express this reflective dimension, Jacques Rancière (2009, 107–32) argues for the
“pensive image.” In Schwab (2008a) I argue that this trajectory was begun by Walter Benjamin’s reassess-
ment of early German Romanticism. In this respect, I want to point out that already for Novalis there is
a deep similarity between art and science when he says that “the innermost principles of art and science
are mechanical” (quoted in Menninghaus 1987, 36), which being governed by difference produce mat-
ters of fact.

37
 Michael Schwab

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 Epistemic Complexity and
Experimental Systems in
Music Performance1
Paulo De Assis
Orpheus Research Centre in Music

i ntr o duc ti o n
In a process that was particularly enhanced in the twentieth century, the per-
formance of musical “works” became a complex articulation of different types
of data, information, and knowledge, retraceable in diverse material sources
(including sketches, instruments, editions, recordings), in reflective discourses
(in, on, and about music), and in multifarious performance “styles.” The contin-
uous accumulation and sedimentation of such kinds of knowledge represents
an exponential growth of complexity that involves technical, artistic, aesthetic,
and epistemic components. Such “complexity” might be labelled—borrow-
ing a concept from the sciences (Dasgupta 1997; Kováç [2000] 2013; Kováç
2007)—“epistemic complexity.”
Considering musical works as highly elaborated semiotic artefacts, I situate
different elements (such as sketches, manuscripts, editions, recordings, and
articles) involved in music performance in terms of “epistemic complexity.” By
deconstructing works in this way, the tokens of their respective and variable
complexity emerge as “boundary objects” (Star and Griesemer 1989), objects
that change their ontological and epistemological nature depending on the
context in which they are used.2
The dismantling of musical works into their graspable constitutive elements
reveals them as complex accumulations of singularities, as multi-layered amal-
gamations of “things” (Kubler [1962] 2008; Brown 2001), disclosing open-

1 Reprinted from Experimental Systems: Future Knowledge in Artistic Research, edited by Michael Schwab,
151–165 (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2013). Reprinted by permission of the author and the publish-
er.
2 On the concept of “boundary object” in the context of artistic research, see Henk Borgdorff ’s interview
with Michael Schwab (Borgdorff 2012, 174–83, particularly 177). Borgdorff attributes the concept of
“boundary object” to Thomas F. Gieryn. However, Gieryn’s concept is that of “boundary work,” which
has a different meaning, referring to instances in which frontiers, boundaries, limits, and demarcations
between fields of knowledge are created, established, advocated, or reinforced (see Gieryn 1983). Borg-
dorff ’s use of the notion appears to be situated somewhere between “boundary work” and “boundary
object” in the way I use the term here, which follows Star and Griesemer (1989).

41
 Paulo De Assis

ended possibilities for infinite new assemblages—raising questions of tracea-

bility, control, and critical assessment of the results. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s
notion of “experimental systems” seems to be a promising conceptual and
methodological framework for the concrete practice of such new aesthet-
ic-epistemic assemblages. In the central part of this paper I will describe
Rheinberger’s thinking, preparing the reader for the application of this theory
to music performance.
Beyond the mere (re)creation or (re)production of a work through perfor-
mance, at stake in this paper are processes that constitute musical “things” as
objects for thought through performative devices. From this perspective the
notion of epistemic complexity is just one element among many that contrib-
ute to a new mode of exposing musical objects. Methodologically this new
mode is organised by different but interrelated approaches: identifying and
scrutinising musical “things” that define a given musical work (in the sense of
an “archaeology”); studying their “epistemic complexity”; extracting them out
of their traditional Umwelt and inserting them within the confines of exper-
imental systems; and, finally, “exposing” them anew, in previously unheard
reconfigurations of materials.

e pi s te M i c c oMplexity

In his essay “Experimental Complexity in Biology: Some Epistemological and

Historical Remarks,” Rheinberger (1997a, S245) states that “reduction of com-
plexity is a prerequisite for experimental research.” In other words, the overall
context of research is characterised by complex configurations and arrange-
ments of complex “things” that must be filtered and precisely selected to
become part of the experimental setup. A vast number of components, inter-
actions, behaviours, and embedded knowledges precede the experimental
research itself. In order to do research and to arrive at some kind of result, the
ontic complexity of the research object has to be reduced while retaining its
fundamental and specific “epistemic complexity.” Despite the title of his arti-
cle, Rheinberger does not really address the topic of “complexity,” since his
central concern is with the experimental situation. Even when he writes that
“experimental systems are machines for reducing complexity” (ibid., S247), he
does not enter into a discussion of exactly what characterises this “complexity,”
a characterisation that would inform the “epistemic horizon” that enables the
research in the first place. Further elaboration of the notion of “complexity”
thus seems pertinent.
Biologist Ladislav Kováç and the philosopher Subrata Dasgupta—working
separately and in different disciplines—have produced stimulating reflections
on the topic of “epistemic complexity.” According to Kováç (2007, 65), “bio-
logical evolution is a progressing process of knowledge acquisition (cognition)
and, correspondingly, of growth of complexity. The acquired knowledge rep-
resents epistemic complexity.” Dasgupta (addressing “technology and com-
plexity”) uses the same term in relation to artificial (i.e., human-made) things,

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 Epistemic Complexity and Experimental Systems

defining complexity as “the richness of the knowledge that is embedded in an

artefact” (Dasgupta 1997, 116).
Inspired by Hans Kuhn’s understanding of life as an unceasing process of
accumulation of knowledge that starts with self-copying nucleic acids (Kuhn
1972, 1988), Ladislav Kováç (1986) developed a “bottom-up” approach to epis-
temological problems—an approach that may be associated with “cognitive
biology”3 and that conceives life as “epistemic unfolding of the universe”
(Kováç [2000] 2013, 1). Biological evolution, based on a logic of self-replicating
entities, is a continual growth of knowledge that involves the “creation of sub-
jects with ever greater embodied knowledge” (ibid., 18, emphasis added). This
principle presupposes that “there are levels of complexity in the living world
and that, in the course of biological evolution, there has been a continuous
growth of complexity” (ibid., 14). This tendency toward the epistemic unfold-
ing of the universe constitutes what Kováç calls the “epistemic principle” (ibid.,
14–20). According to this, but omitting the normative connotation of the word
“progress,” there is a general tendency toward ever more complex organisms.
However, there is no teleology and no guiding principle with a clear end. What
are observable are several teleonomic processes that simply produce complex
products without any guiding foresight. A system (in this case a biological spe-
cies) is situated in a given environment with (a) surroundings (the part of the
environment that interacts with the system and has a detectable influence on
it), and (b) an Umwelt (the specific part of the surroundings that interacts with
the sensors of the system).4 However, only that part of the Umwelt that is experi-
enced by the subject (Husserl’s Lebenswelt) is effectively internalised as the basis
for construction(s) and operationally used as the initial input for solving prob-
lems (cf. Kováç 2007, 66). As Kováç says: “At all levels, from the simplest to the
most complex, the overall construction of the subject, the embodiment of the
achieved knowledge, represents its epistemic complexity. It is the epistemic com-
plexity which continually increases in biological evolution, and also in cultural
evolution, and gives the evolution its direction” (Kováç [2000] 2013, 17).
Coming from a completely different field of inquiry, with a background
in computer science, artificial intelligence, and cognitive sciences, Subrata
Dasgupta’s theories on systemic and epistemic complexity open up new ave-
nues for understanding human creativity and its tendency to continuously
generate new artefacts. Whereas Kováç is focused on biological species and
entities, Dasgupta’s interests revolve around human-made artefacts and their
origins, evolution, and epistemic content. According to Dasgupta, artefacts are

3 According to Boden and Zaw (1980, 25), “a cognitive biology would be one in which biological phenom-
ena were conceptualized for theoretical purposes in terms of categories whose primary application is
in the domain of knowledge.” Moreover, according to Kováç ([2000] 2013, 1) “knowledge is embodied in
constructions of organisms and the structural complexity of those constructions—which carry embod-
ied knowledge—corresponds to their epistemic complexity” (Kováç [2000] 2013, 1).
4 The subtle differentiation between “surroundings” and “Umwelt” goes back to the work of Jakob von
Uexküll (cf. Uexküll 1982). Jesper Hoffmeyer (2012) describes this difference as follows: “In everyday
German, Umwelt means simply ‘surroundings’ or ‘environment,’ but through the work of the German
biologist Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) the term, at least in scientific literature has acquired more
specific semiotic meanings as the ecological niche as an animal perceives it; the experienced world,
phenomenal world, or subjective universe; and the cognitive map or mind-set.”

43
 Paulo De Assis

“useful things that are produced or consciously conceived in response to some

practical need, want or desire” (Dasgupta 1996, 9). But artefacts possess another
fundamental and interesting property, one that relates to Kováç: “like organ-
isms, they manifest evolution” (Dasgupta 1997, 114). The production of “things”
and their evolution over time are, therefore, central topics of his reflections. In
approaching these topics, Dasgupta distinguishes systemic complexity from epis-
temic complexity. Referring to Herbert Simon’s (1962) article “The Architecture
of Complexity,” Dasgupta argues that “a system . . . is said to be complex if it is
composed of a large number of parts or components that interact in nontrivial
ways” (Dasgupta 1997, 113). Complexity depends, then, on quantitative charac-
teristics and on intricate operational behaviours—aspects that tell us what the
nature of an artefact is. Dasgupta calls this kind of “complexity” systemic com-
plexity. It does not tell us how that artefact assumed the form it did, nor does it
give us any clues about what it might produce in the future. The crucial claim
of Dasgupta is that beyond systemic complexity there is another, deeper kind of
complexity in the universe of human-made things: “the richness of the knowledge
that is embedded in an artifact. I shall call this epistemic complexity. It consists of the
knowledge that both contributes to, and is generated by, the creation of an arti-
fact” (Dasgupta 1997, 116). Any artefact is, therefore, surrounded by knowledge
that is prior to its emergence and also by knowledge that appears only after the
artefact was made. In addition to these ex-ante and ex-post moments, the spe-
cific moment of invention or design is itself a knowledge-rich, cognitive pro-
cess. Furthermore, artefacts themselves are also knowledge: a design embodies
and encapsulates one or more operational principles, to start with. “And, in the
case of true invention, when the artifactual form is original in some significant
sense, the operational principles it encodes constitute genuinely new knowl-
edge” (ibid., 117). Whereas the systemic complexity of an artefact requires it to be
made up of a large number of parts or components that interact in complicated,
non-trivial ways, epistemic complexity adds to it two wholly new dimensions: the
artefact’s capacity for producing unexpected behaviour; and the amount, vari-
ety, and novelty of the knowledge embedded in it. It is this embedded knowl-
edge that Dasgupta calls “the epistemic complexity of an artefact” (cf. ibid., 118).
Dasgupta proposes the identification and enumeration of the “significant
knowledge tokens” that constitute an artefact as a first step toward an evalu-
ation of its epistemic complexity. However, as he says, the risk is that such an
enumeration will stay within the limits of the artefact’s systemic complexity, con-
veying “nothing of the intricacy of the interactions of these knowledge tokens,
nor the manner in which they came to participate in the cognitive act, nor (in
the case of old knowledge) why they were invoked at all” (ibid., 136). And here
is where Rheinberger’s experimental systems (and his proposed methodolog-
ical reduction of systemic complexity) might be extremely useful, helping to
situate better the “significant knowledge tokens” at hand. In turn, this would
allow precise calibration of the diverse objects/things involved in the experi-
mental set up and to produce graphematic outputs that allow for traceability
and for the constitution of new tokens (involving epistemic gain). However,
before describing Rheinberger’s experimental systems, and to facilitate the

44
 Epistemic Complexity and Experimental Systems

understanding of its use in music performance, it is necessary to turn first to

the exploration of epistemic complexity in music.

e pi s te Mi c c oM plex i ty i n M u sic

Musical works are highly elaborated, complex semiotic artefacts with intricate
operational functions. They are made of a variable, though normally large,
number of constitutive parts that interact in non-trivial ways. This gives them,
in the first place, systemic complexity. But they are also the products of inven-
tion and embed a rich array of interconnected knowledge encapsulating one
or more operational principles. Their conception, creation, and concrete mak-
ing (and/or performing) inherently involve pre- and post-knowledge, as well
as a vast combination of refined cognitive processes. Like organisms, they also
manifest evolution (but not necessarily “progress”), doing this in three ways:
(1) in terms of “pure” creation, that is, new, original compositions; (2) in terms
of re-creation, that is, the performance of past musical works; (3) in the sophis-
ticated process of their preservation over time (editions, recordings, theoret-
ical reflections, etc.). Taking a closer look at the history of musical “things”
(without adhering to traditional visions of music history, compartmentalised
in styles and periods) and adapting George Kubler’s statement regarding a
“history of things,” a “history of musical things” would include both material
artefacts and aesthetic positions, both replicas and unique examples, both
tools and expressions—in short all materials worked by human hands under
the guidance of connected ideas developed in temporal sequence (cf. Kubler
[1962] 2008, 8). New pieces are a combination of old knowledge with new cog-
nitive extensions, and—in the most interesting cases—with unexpected and
surprising elements. In addition to their systemic complexity, music things aim
at producing unprecedented events embodying new knowledge. In this sense,
through the amount, variety, newness, and richness of the knowledge that they
embed, they have a considerable epistemic complexity, being artistic examples
of what Rheinberger (talking about “experimentation” and following François
Jacob) designates as “a machine to make the future” (Rheinberger 1997b, 33).
Musical works are surrounded by and encapsulated in specific epistemic set-
tings, which are made of elaborated collections of historically produced (and
inherited) “things,” such as sketches, drafts, first editions, recordings, or essays
concerning a given musical work. After two centuries in which the “work-con-
cept” dominated (see, among others, Goehr [1992] 2007), in recent decades
attention has turned to what may be called an extended work-concept that takes
into consideration the deconstruction of musical works into their graspable
constitutive elements, revealing them as complex accumulations of singular-
ities and as multi-layered conglomerates of “things” with the utmost diversity
(cf. Kramer 2011, chapters 11 and 14). The closer one gets to such constitutive
things, the clearer the epistemic complexity of musical works and perfor-
mances becomes.

45
 Paulo De Assis

From the perspective of a performer dealing with a musical work from the
past (which might also be a very recent past), types of relevant objects loaded
with variable degrees of epistemic complexity include:

1. Materials generated by the composer (sketches, drafts, manuscripts,

first prints, revisions of prints, etc.)
2. Editions of a “piece” throughout time
3. Recordings of works
4. The reflective and conceptual (musicological, philosophical, analyt-
ical, etc.) apparatus around musical works (including thesis, articles,
books, etc.)
5. The organological diversity; that is, the musical instruments in use (for
example, historical versus contemporary)
6. The performative/aesthetic “orientation” of the performer (histori-
cally informed practice, “Romantic interpretation,” “new objectivity,”
“modernising approach,” etc.)
7. Arrangements of works
8. The practitioner’s own body, which is biologically, technically, and cul-
turally organised

One important observation is that until quite recently many of the items in this
list were not generally available since they were the “property” of an exclusive
group of experts. In the current, increasingly democratised knowledge-society
more and more people have access to them. The items on the list are just the
main tokens of a musical work’s epistemic complexity and may be extended
by potentially infinite further sub-tokens. They build a complicated network
of things with embedded knowledge. At some point, they all were reifications
or sedimentation of a specific creative or reflective situation. Now, they might
function as (1) objects of inquiry (What are they? How many parts do they have?
How do they function?) or as (2) “things” for further inquiries (How can they
become productive again? How can they build reconfigurations of the work
they belong to? What futures do they enhance?). The first approach has to do
with a work’s systemic complexity, the second with its epistemic complexity.
Moreover, making explicit the epistemic complexity of musical works allows
us to understand works as made up of a myriad of “boundary objects” (see
also Star and Griesemer 1989). To make performances using selections of such
“boundary objects” is an act that discloses open-ended possibilities for new
assemblages. Crucial to these new assemblages—and necessary to enhance
their epistemic complexity—is the inclusion of a productive “not-yet-know-
ing,” the creation of room for what is yet unthought and unexpected. Under
this light, processes of becoming appear as more productive than statements
of being. Works, just like “objects of knowledge,” in general remain essentially
open. The fundamental incompleteness of any attempt to “close” or narrow
down a human-made invention becomes the starting point for epistemic
games. In the place of a clear-cut ontology of the artwork, we find an unfolding

46
 Epistemic Complexity and Experimental Systems

becoming, where experimentation and the concrete production of new assem-

blages become the central artistic activity.

h a ns -J ö r g r hei nber ger ’ s experi M en tal systeM s

Rheinberger developed his theory of “experimental systems” in relation to

the empirical sciences, particularly to molecular biology. However, it was
Rheinberger himself who opened the door for other potential uses of this
theory, specifically, for example, in relation to the activity of writing: “Das
Schreiben, so behaupte ich, ist selbst ein Experimentalsystem” (Rheinberger
2007; my translation: Writing, so I claim, is an experimental system in its own
right). That Rheinberger mentions “writing” [Das Schreiben] as a poten-
tial field for applications of his theory has certainly to do with his concep-
tion of the experimental space and of the scientific object itself as a complex
“bundle of inscriptions” (Rheinberger 1997b, 111). The idea of “inscription”
might be traced back to Derrida, whose seminal book De la grammatologie [Of
Grammatology] Rheinberger translated into German (with Hanns Zischler) in
1983. Taking his own suggestions further, I propose to extend the use of his
theory also to the performance of past musical works.
In the prologue to his book Toward a History of Epistemic Things, Rheinberger
stresses that “in a post-Kuhnian move away from the hegemony of theory, histo-
rians and philosophers of science have given experimentation more attention
in recent years” (Rheinberger 1997b, 1). Reflecting that, Rheinberger’s essay is
“an attempt at an epistemology of contemporary experimentation based on
the notion of ‘experimental system’” (ibid.). Originally taken from the everyday
practice and vernacular of mid-twentieth-century life scientists, the concept
of “experimental system” is frequently used, as in Rheinberger, to characterise
the space and scope of the research activities conducted by researchers in those
sciences (particularly in biochemistry and molecular biology). Importantly, this
is, in the first place, a practitioner’s notion, not an observer’s (see Rheinberger
1997b, 19). In his most succinct formulation, Rheinberger states that “experi-
mental systems are arrangements that allow us to create cognitive, spatiotem-
poral singularities” (ibid., 23). And in a later publication Rheinberger writes, “It
is only at the beginning of the 1990s and in the context of an ongoing replace-
ment of theory-dominated perspectives of scientific change by practice-driven
views on research that the concept of experimental systems has found entrance
into the historical and philosophical literature on science (Rheinberger 1992,
Rheinberger and Hagner 1993, Rheinberger 1997[b])” (Rheinberger 2004, 2).
On several occasions—notably in the “Prologue” to the book Toward a
History of Epistemic Things and in the online essay “Experimental Systems: Entry
Encyclopedia for the History of Life” (Rheinberger 2004)—Rheinberger gives
a thorough description of the four basic features of an experimental system.
These features are summarised in table 1.

47
 Paulo De Assis

(a) Working units of —“Experimental systems . . . are the genuine working units of contempo-
contemporary research rary research in which the scientific objects and the technical conditions
of their production are inextricably interconnected. They are, insepara-
bly and at one and the same time, local, individual, social, institutional,
technical, instrumental, and, above all, epistemic units. Experimental
systems are thus impure, hybrid settings” (Rheinberger 1997b, 2).

(b) Differential —“Experimental systems must be capable of differential reproduc-

reproduction tion . . . in order to behave as devices for producing scientific novelties
that are beyond our present knowledge, that is, to behave as ‘genera-
tor[s] of surprises.’. . . To be productive, experimental systems have to
be organized in such a way that the generation of differences becomes
the reproductive driving force of the whole experimental machinery”
(Rheinberger 1997b, 3).
—“Differential reproduction conveys a peculiar kind of historicity to
experimental systems. They can acquire, to speak with Ian Hacking ‘a
life of their own’”1 (Rheinberger 2004, 5, including citation of Hacking
1983, 215).

(c) Graphematicity —“Experimental systems are the units within which the signifiers of
science are generated. They display their meanings within spaces of
representation . . . in which graphemes, that is, material traces . . . are
produced, articulated, and disconnected and are placed, displaced, and
replaced. . . . scientists create spaces of representation through graph-
ematic concatenations that represent their epistemic traces as engrav-
ings, that is, generalized forms of ‘writing’” (Rheinberger 1997b, 3).

(d) Experimental cultures —“Experimental systems get linked into experimental ensembles, or
conjunctures experimental cultures. . . . [through] conjunctures and bifurcations”
bifurcations (Rheinberger 1997b, 3).
hybridisations —“Finally, conjunctures and ramifications of experimental systems
can lead to ensembles of such systems, or experimental cultures.”
(Rheinberger 2004, 6).

Table 1

In short, an experimental system is a specific unit of research, spatiotempo-

rally precisely located, wherein two kinds of “things” interact: technical objects
and epistemic things (whose difference is functional and not ontological).
Within such a system, mechanisms of reproduction and repetition aim at the
generation of differences. Furthermore, an experimental system is a space of
representation where inscriptions are made in order to generate and preserve
traces. Finally, experimental systems might establish links to other experimen-
tal systems (conjunctures), be divided into several experimental systems (bifur-
cations), or merge with other experimental systems (hybridisation). At some

48

Table 1. The four basic features of an experimental system.

 Epistemic Complexity and Experimental Systems

point an articulation of ensembles of experimental systems might emerge, gen-

erating what Rheinberger calls “experimental culture” (cf. Rheinberger 1997b,
3).
Rheinberger’s use of the term “system” means a kind of loose coherence
both synchronically with respect to the technical [objects] and organic [epis-
temic] elements that enter into an experimental system and diachronically
with respect to its persistence over time (Rheinberger 2004, 3). As the use of
the terms “technical object” and “epistemic elements” reveals, technicity and
epistemicity form an intricate relation at the inner core of an experimental sys-
tem. “Epistemic things” are the entities “whose unknown characteristics are
the target of an experimental inquiry” (Rheinberger 1997b, 238), paradoxically
embodying what one does not yet know (cf. ibid., 28). “Technical objects” (sed-
imentations of earlier epistemic things) are scientific objects that “embody
the knowledge of a given research field at a given time” (ibid., 245); they might
be “instruments, apparatus, and devices which bound and confine the assess-
ment of the epistemic things” (Rheinberger 2004, 4). Technical objects and
epistemic things coexist simultaneously within the experimental system, and
“whether an object functions as an epistemic or a technical entity depends
on the place or ‘node’ it occupies in the experimental context” (Rheinberger
1997b, 30); “within a particular research process, epistemic things can eventu-
ally be turned into technical things and become incorporated into the techni-
cal conditions of the system” (Rheinberger 2004, 4). Between the two extremes,
there is room for a gradient scale, for diverse degrees of hybrid things and for
vague material entities whose function in the experimental system changes. An
example of such an entity, when applying these notions to music, is the score,
the material inscription of a complex set of signs and symbols that might be
considered as either an epistemic thing or a technical object depending on the
role it plays at any particular point during a performance.

e x per i M entati o n i n M us i c per F o rMan c e : h oW to M aKe th e

F utur e ?

The application of Rheinberger’s terminology and research architecture to

music performance is an attempt to establish a wider common ground for
artistic research in music performance. This application is not obvious, nor is
it straightforward. Rheinberger developed his theories in a very specific field
of inquiry. In transferring these theories to other fields (especially to artistic
and creative areas), one must proceed cautiously. This said, however, there are
several musical entities that might be considered as being “technical objects”
and/or “epistemic things,” depending on the specific use and context of their
presentation. Accepting the risk incurred in applying Rheinberger’s theories to
music, one might say that scores, instruments, or tuning systems, for instance,
may be seen as technical objects that are brought into particular constellations
(such as “the concert” or a CD recording), to produce assemblages that are
treated and perceived as works of art. The same entities may, however, operate
as epistemic things, whose qualities can be divided into two main groups: those

49
 Paulo De Assis

already known and those still to be known (discovered). Musical works partici-
pate, therefore, in two different worlds: one related to their past (what consti-
tutes them as recognisable objects), another related to their future (what they
might become). If we require the performance to be an idealised act of inter-
pretation (be it hermeneutic or performative5) and if we reduce it to the rep-
etition of the score (understood as an instrumental technical object), we take
away the possibility for epistemic things to emerge or to unfold into unfore-
seen dimensions. We would be dealing mainly with the work’s past. If we want
to give credibility to performance as an instance, among others, of epistemic
activity, we need a concept such as “experimentation” that creates space in rela-
tion to the score (which would otherwise overdetermine and close down the
epistemic potential of performance practice), allowing unpredictable futures
to happen. And we also need Rheinberger’s experimental systems as a basic
methodological tool to frame our artistic experimental approach.
From this perspective, experimentation, methodologically conducted
through experimental systems, might allow for “making the future” of past
musical works, something of which “interpretation” is far less capable.
Moreover, artistic experimentation has the potential to bring together the past
and the future of “things,” enabling and concretely building (constructing) new
assemblages—something that non-artistic modes of knowledge production
cannot do.
But how can such new assemblages appear? Under what conditions and
responding to which criteria? How to evaluate their quality? How to assess
their constitutive parts and define them as contributions to knowledge? To
suggest possible lines of answer to these questions a brief summary of the con-
cepts and practices exposed so far in this chapter—as well as a reference to
the Foucauldian concepts of archaeology and problematisation—will help better
situate and explain not only the concept of “experimentation” in use in this
chapter but also my own conception of artistic research and its role in our
knowledge society.
The first fundamental concept presented in this chapter was that of epistemic
complexity as defined and developed by Kováç and Dasgupta. For Kováç epis-
temic complexity is the result of the epistemic unfolding of the universe (epis-
temic principle), while for Dasgupta it concerns the richness of the knowledge
that is embedded in an artefact. If we think in terms of simple time coordinates
such as past-present-future these two perspectives share one characteristic:
they both scrutinise things (biological organisms or human-made artefacts),
looking at and analysing their respective pasts. What things are in the present
is understood to be an accumulation of epistemic features throughout time,
from the past until the present. Even if this approach might inform us how an
organism or an artefact might behave in the near future, the main concern of
those two authors is not with the future but with identifying, articulating, and
evaluating the evolution of such things.

5 For the distinction between hermeneutic and performative “interpretation” see Hermann Danuser’s
entry on “Interpretation” for the German Encyclopaedia MGG (Danuser 2007).

50
 Epistemic Complexity and Experimental Systems

Second, I presented the concept of things as developed by Rheinberger,

inspired by Kubler. This concept allowed me to consider the epistemic com-
plexity of the natural and human worlds as a potentially infinite galaxy of things,
entities that escape closed definitions and that might have different functions
according to the context in which they are temporarily immersed. In the sec-
ond section I mentioned some graspable examples of things that constitute
musical works, things that I defined as tokens of a musical work’s epistemic
complexity. This breakdown of the epistemic complexity of musical works into
its manifold constitutive elements (things) is crucial because it enables open-
ended possibilities for new assemblages.
In this constellation of potentially infinite things the concept of archaeology,
as elaborated by Michel Foucault, becomes a helpful methodological tool.
According to Clare O’Farrell, “‘Archaeology’ is the term Foucault used during
the 1960s to describe his approach to writing history. Archaeology is about
examining the discursive traces and orders left by the past in order to write a
‘history of the present.’ In other words archaeology is about looking at history
as a way of understanding the processes that have led to what we are today”
(O’Farrell 2007). In this sense, archaeology is a way to look at the past from the
present, with the goal of better situating/understanding the present (and, cru-
cially, not the past). It describes a boomerang-like route: from the present to the
past, and back from the past to the present. It does not aim at disclosing “how
things really were” but rather “why things are what they are” today. In Foucault’s
words:

Archaeology does not try to restore what has been thought, wished, aimed at,
experienced, desired by men in the very moment at which they expressed it in
discourse. . . . it does not try to repeat what has been said by reaching it in its very
identity. It does not claim to efface itself in the ambiguous modesty of a reading
that would bring back, in all its purity, the distant, precarious, almost effaced light
of the origin. It is nothing more than a rewriting: that is, in the preserved form of
exteriority, a regulated transformation of what has already been written. It is not
a return to the innermost secret of the origin; it is the systematic description of a
discourse-object. (Foucault 1972, 139–40)

The link to Michel Foucault is explicit in Rheinberger and is very important

to his theories of experimental systems in several regards but particularly to
the definition of epistemic thing: “[Foucault’s] ‘discourse-object’ is what I call
an epistemic thing” (Rheinberger 1997b, 8). For Rheinberger, epistemic things
are “things embodying concepts” that “deserve as much attention as genera-
tions of historians have bestowed on disembodied ideas” (ibid.). To give epis-
temic things the attention they deserve is (1) to extract them out of the chaos
of systemic complexity, and (2) to allow them to contribute to the formation
of new entities, new epistemic things that, in turn, will add new things to the
archaeology of epistemic things, that is, to epistemic complexity. From this per-
spective, archaeology appears almost as a necessary consequence of epistemic
complexity.

51
 Paulo De Assis

But Foucault’s “discourse-object” is not only to be described but must be pro-

ductively resituated, involving problematisation, another Foucauldian concept
that gained increased relevance in Foucault’s late works: “The notion common
to all the work that I have done since Histoire de la Folie is that of problematiza-
tion” (Foucault 1998, 257). With this concept Foucault refers to the work one
does to direct one’s thought toward present practices which were once seen as
stable but which the researcher shows to be problematic in some crucial sense.
“Problematization doesn’t mean the representation of a pre-existent object,
nor the creation through discourse of an object that doesn’t exist. It is the total-
ity of discursive or non-discursive practices that introduces something into the
play of the true and false and constitutes it as an object for thought” (ibid.).
Problematisation has, therefore, to do with “objects,” with things that are
archaeologically retraced and transmuted from “neutral objects” into “objects
for thought.” In the context of the present chapter, archaeology and problem-
atisation go hand-in-hand, and they both work as problematisation of the aes-
thetic-epistemic complexity described above.
Epistemic complexity, things, archaeology, problematisation—the concepts pre-
sented so far—all scrutinise things (biological organisms, human-made arte-
facts, and concepts) by enquiring into their past. The notion of problemati-
sation might be understood as a highly elaborated form of interpretation of
historical data. In this sense, looking backwards and applied to music, it is per-
fectly recognisable in disciplines such as, for example, music analysis, music
theory, music historiography, organology, and biographical studies—in fact in
the majority of musicological sub-disciplines.
However, there might be a different mode of problematising things, a mode
that, rather than aiming to retrieve what things are, searches for new ways of
productively exposing them. That is to say, a mode that, instead of critically
looking into the past, creatively projects things into the future. Such is the
final proposal of this chapter: to reverse the perspective from “looking into the
past” to creatively designing the future of past musical works. In my view this
is precisely what artistic research could be about—a creative mode that brings
together the past and the future of things in ways that non-artistic modes can-
not do. In doing this, artistic research must be able to include archaeology,
problematisation, and experimentation in its inner fabric. The making of artis-
tic experimentation through Rheinberger’s experimental systems becomes a creative
form of problematisation, whereby through differential repetition new assemblages
of things are materially handcrafted and constructed.
In a deeper sense experimentation is not the act of conducting experiments
(and even less of making tests). Aesthetic experimentation relates primarily to
a completely new orientation of the senses and of the reason, aiming to recon-
figure the sensible. As phrased by Ludger Schwarte in the opening speech of a
conference on “experimental aesthetics” held in Düsseldorf in 2011: “Aesthetic
experimentation starts when the parameters of a given aesthetic praxis are
broken, suspended, or transcended, in order to work out a particular mode

52
 Epistemic Complexity and Experimental Systems

of appearance that reconfigures the field of the visible and of the utterable”
(Schwarte 2012, 187, my translation).6
That such reconfigurations are only possible after a profound consideration
of the epistemic complexity of aesthetic things is the inevitable and necessary
condition for creative problematisation; that is to say: for artistic research.
From this perspective, artistic research therefore happens when: (1) The epis-
temic complexity of a given object of inquiry is scrutinised; (2) the constitutive
things of such objects of inquiry are identified and isolated; (3) an archaeology
of such things is explored; (4) the results of this exploration are problematised
with the purpose of enabling their projection into the future; (5) the problema-
tisation happens in precisely calibrated frameworks (experimental systems); (6)
inside an experimental system differential repetition is stimulated, enhanced, and
achieved; (7) new assemblages of things emerge as the result of a constructive
(and not only theoretical) endeavour.

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Contemporary Theory, edited by Theodore Life, Max Planck Institute for the History
R. Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina, and Eike of Science, Berlin. Accessed 09 May 2013.
von Savigny, 175–88. London: Routledge http://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/essays/
Kováç, Ladislav (1986). “Úvod do kognitívnej data/enc19?p=1.
biológie” [Introduction to cognitive ———. 2007. “Man weiss nicht genau, was
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———. (2000) 2013. “Fundamental Zeitung, 5 May. Accessed 5 December
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and Cognition 6: 51–69. Republished startseite/articleELG88-1.354487.
online by Bratislava Biocenter, no date. Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg, and Michael
Accessed 21 May 2013. www.biocenter. Hagner. 1993. “Experimentalsysteme.”
sk/lkpubcogbiol_files/c-7.pdf. Page In Die Experimentalisierung des Lebens:
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edition. Wissenschaften, 1850 / 1950, edited by
———. 2007. “Information and Knowledge Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and Michael
in Biology: Time for Reappraisal.” Plant Hagner, 7–27. Berlin: Akademie.
Signaling & Behavior 2 (2): 65–73. Schwarte, Ludger. 2012. “Experimentelle
Kramer, Lawrence. 2011. Interpreting Music. Ästhetik: Arbeit an den Grenzen
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Kubler, George. (1962) 2008. The Shape of Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 57 (2): 185–95.
Time: Remarks on the History of Things. New Simon, Herbert A. 1962. “The Architecture
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of Science 64: S245–S254.

54
Experimental Art as Research
Godfried-Willem Raes
Logos Foundation, Ghent

A number of recent developments, particularly in higher education in the arts

across Europe, have resulted in the theory and practice of research in art gain-
ing new momentum.1 The underlying reason is simple: academic higher edu-
cation, whether technical or purely scientific, can only claim to be academic
when supported by scientific research and insofar as the institutions that pro-
vide such education pursue their own research. Education that consists mainly
of learning skills is for this reason not academic: it is craftsmanship. In a great
many European countries, the decision has been made—partly in imitation of
the Anglo-Saxon model—to include higher education in the arts in academic
education. And this very phenomenon—besides creating hilarious phenomena
such as teaching piano, trumpet, or violin by “lecture”—has saddled us with a
considerable problem. The difficulty is apparent in all sectors of art education:
the fine arts, music, performing arts, and even literature, although academic
training in the latter is pretty much non-existent in most Western countries.
In recent years, research competence has become one of the aims of education
and, like the thesis-based doctorate, has become a fundamental condition for
gaining tenure in institutions of higher education in the arts.
Clearly research in art is not the same as research about art. The latter, after
all, belongs within the humanities (art history, musicology, literature studies,
etc.), which have had a solid place among our university courses for years. Their
academic nature is seldom questioned, even though the claim of studies in the
arts to be scientific can be contested on the basis of the artefactual nature of
their object of study. This is because the research deals with artefacts made by
humans, which all too often are directly influenced by the research itself.2 This
area of conflict approaches the self-evident when artists—assuming that they
have any of the required skills—start practising the humanities with respect
to their own work. The distinction between subject and object becomes so

1 I wrote an initial, concise version of this essay in October 2003 in Barcelona for publication in Reflexief.
The Dutch-language original of the present essay, which is somewhat more extensive than the original,
was written in Ghent in January 2011 at the request of the Dutch magazine Kunstzone. It appeared in
February 2011. This English version, again somewhat extended, was intended for this ORCiM publica-
tion.
2 Michel Houellebecq’s most recent novel (La carte et le territoire, 2010) is very enlightening on that
issue, although he is certainly not the only one to point out the manipulative aspect of the art world.
Incidentally, one should put this into perspective here by mentioning the relatively recent emergence
of disciplines such as systematic musicology, which is not so much directed towards specific artistic
artefacts, their makers and their history, as towards the general issues surrounding the phenomenon of
music and its conditions of existence; in doing so it only uses scientific research methods.

55
 Godfried-Willem Raes

blurred at that point that the research results can be considered purely ego-
tistical. An artist can indeed, with perfect legitimacy, take his or her own work
as the object of all kinds of reflections, but it can never be a valid object of
academic research. It is clear that making arts education academic cannot be
intended to link it to, let alone merge it with, the humanities. The big question
remains: what is research in the arts?
Research automatically implies that there is something being researched and
that a question, a problem, exists with respect to that something. But not just
anything can be the object of research: the need for a rational research method
to exist and for the results to make a verifiable difference are obvious require-
ments. Moreover, it is also necessary for the object of research to be prob-
lematic and for the problem to have a demonstrable significance. The latter
must certainly supersede the significance it has for the individual researcher.
A painter wrestling with perspective, a composer tying him- or herself in knots
over problems of orchestration, a performer struggling with a highly complex
score . . . these people are searching, but not researching. That is, and remains,
a fundamental distinction. Creating art, practising it, with whatever degree of
excellence, cannot simply be conflated with research in art. Art and research
are not the same thing, although they may occur together.
However, art that is not problematic, hence art that does not research any-
thing, is something I believe I can only reluctantly call art, since it would limit
itself to purely reproductive, at most somewhat interpretative, craftsmanship.
This forces us to use a somewhat more restrictive definition of art than the
customary definition as understood by common sense. Even one that is a bit
elitist, perhaps. An artist who limits him- or herself to craft is like a laboratory
technician who uses test tubes, measuring scales, and reactions according to
the rules, regulations, and rituals, but does so without asking any questions,
to no purpose that is clear to him or her. Or like musicians, whether or not
they have instruments to play with, who attempt to interpret a score as well
as their fine motor control will allow for the entertainment of their fellow
human beings. They are performing, but in no sense does this entail research,
as it lacks problematic content. Following this line of reasoning, therefore, rel-
evant art—art that poses relevant problems—is by nature experimental. The
problem, the question, is the most important force that drives it. In this respect
there is no fundamental difference whatsoever between art and science. The
main difference lies first in the rigidity of the research method and second in
the nature of the problems investigated in art. With respect to the former, the
rigidity of the research method, I would like to point out that the experimen-
tal arts world has made considerable progress in the last quarter of a century
and its methods do indeed correspond to methods in contemporary scientific
research. The existence of scientific journals such as the Computer Music Journal,
Leonardo, Organised Sound, and others, bears witness to this.3 As to the latter, the

3 The conception of research in the arts defended here corresponds closely to a tradition that has been
prevalent in the progressive contemporary music world since the second half of the twentieth century.
We only need to think of the many variants of the “Centre de Recherches Musicales” in French-speak-

56
 Experimental Art as Research

nature of the problems investigated, the problems mainly have to do with what
I would like to call expression (in the broad sense). Experimental art searches
for and develops means of expression. If the results of this research are consid-
ered significant enough, the artistic results in which they are embedded sim-
ply become art. The mere use of means of expression, however innovative they
may be, is by no means sufficient to call a project “research.” These means of
expression may be highly individual and specific, but may also be suitable for
use in general and relevant to many others who are confronted with similar
problems of expression. The development of means of expression does indeed
occur within the art form itself. After all, it is only within art that they can be
evaluated. At least in the case of experimental art.
To understand expression too narrowly in this context would be a misun-
derstanding: expression is by no means the unique preserve of art! Of course
scientific researchers must also be capable of expression in order to put the
results of their research into the forum where it is ultimately to be tested.
Communication skills are clearly necessary to make the researcher’s expres-
sions comprehensible. In the case of science, it is also desirable to be as unam-
biguous as possible. However, in the case of expressing affects and/or concepts,
the primary requirement is that the expression is able to invoke affects and/or
concepts in those to whom it is potentially directed. A lack of ambiguity is not
necessarily a requirement here, although high levels of convergence may occur.
It is clear that this happens from the simple fact that a large number of artistic
expressions are classified in the same way by large groups of people. A requiem
is not cheerful dance music. That is quite objective.
Music is pre-linguistic, as it were, since it precedes or at least displaces con-
ventional semantics. This is why its syntax cannot be set out in a system of fixed
rules, let alone prescribed. The pre-linguistic nature of artistic expression
means that it must by definition concern itself with a search for an adequate
syntax and, in that if nothing else, it is experimental. This adequate syntax is
primarily expressed in the coherence of the form: the architecture of the art-
work. Whatever form it takes, it can only be shown and performed by realisa-
tion in a material form or a substratum of energy. The production of form in
this substratum again requires from the latter a certain suitability that is not
an a priori given. Research in art is therefore primarily concerned with the
development of substrata or media in which and with which the syntax can be
realised as optimally as possible. Of course experimental research into the pos

ing areas, the “Untersuchszentrum für Neue Musik,” “Laboratorium für Klanggestaltung,” “Studio für
Tonuntersuchung,” “Studio for Electronic Music,” “Artistic Research Centre,” “Institute for Psycho-
acoustics and Electronic Music,” and so on, whose names alone are a symptom of this phenomenon. I
have observed that a few peculiar people are currently trying to misuse the concept in a recuperative
and reactionary sense for purely reproductive and historicising purposes, a bit like the way the opera
world embraced the trendy term “music theatre” in the last quarter of the twentieth century, although
the term was thought up by the avant-garde (Kagel, Cage, Stockhausen, etc.) specifically as an antidote
to the decrepitude of opera. It is painful to observe how certain institutions are now even making
funding available for the recuperation of scores by old, rightly forgotten, and totally insignificant con-
servatory directors in the guise of “research into the arts.”

57
 Godfried-Willem Raes

sibilities for processing these substrata, including tools and instruments, also
belongs to research in art.
The main difference between scientific research and research in art lies in
the fact that artistic research does not build up a coherent theory within which
and on the basis of which initial hypotheses are proven as theses. Research in
art, or experimental art, does not necessarily prove anything. Instead it has to
show, demonstrate, and extend possibilities, and, where possible, convince.
Of course one might object that this sort of artistic research is completely
superfluous, since art in earlier times did not go hand in hand with artis-
tic research. However I have serious doubts as to whether this is true. What
is more, there might be evidence for the statement that until a long way into
the nineteenth century, a substantial proportion of artistic production (and, at
that, the segment of artistic production that upholsters art histories to this day)
was indeed fundamentally supported by research but that this link all but dis-
appeared during the nineteenth century under pressure from the general capi-
talisation of artistic production, which led to art becoming largely a vulgar and
reproducible commodity: the commercialisation of art. Indeed, it is certainly
not in the work of Johann Strauss or the music of Jimi Hendrix, Herman van
Veen, Arvo Pärt, or Radiohead (the examples have been taken at random from
commercial music) that we can detect committed artistic research. It is aber-
rant, to say the least, that precisely where people today express themselves, they
do so by imitating handed-down examples (the veneration of corpses in the
classical music world) and by using tools and means of expression that come
from a past in which there was still research into the arts (orchestras and tra-
ditional instruments). A healthy contemporary culture develops its own means
of expression that are adequate to its expressive needs, and ongoing research
in art is essential for it to do so. Historicism aimed at reproduction is gradually
coming to an end. I will not mourn its passing.
If we wish to create space for genuine research in art, the first condition
for doing so is the creation of permanent arts laboratories: sanctuaries from
which experimental art can connect to its contemporary environment and to
the resources provided by both science and technology within that environ-
ment. The importance of these bridges and the interdisciplinary skills required
to use them cannot be emphasised enough: is it not unhealthy and aberrant
that most canonical means of expression, whose use is still taught in our edu-
cational institutions as a craft, are derived from periods in history that are at
least a hundred to five hundred years behind us? It is as if our own time were
incapable of coming up with resources and insights that could serve as a basis
for considerably more adequate means of expression. If this is not yet clear as
a general principle, it boils down to a honest question as to how and why our
conservatories are still teaching students to play violins, bassoons, and oboes,
but only seldom how to use contemporary means of expression, let alone how
to construct and develop them.
To put forward a utopian thought, I believe that higher arts education as a
whole should be conflated with permanent laboratories of this kind. Currently
such labs do exist in a prototypical form. Our knowledge of them is limited

58
 Experimental Art as Research

to the field of means of musical expression, an area for which governments

across Europe have provided a certain minimal funding in recent years. This is
of course a logical consequence of the implementation of the Bologna agree-
ments, which stipulate that all academic education must be linked to research,
and consequently to the necessary resources to bring this about. The Logos
Foundation, based in Ghent (Flanders) has surely played a pioneering role here,
if only in the field of music: it has been constructing and developing new musi-
cal instruments for over forty years, including an entire orchestra of robots. In
the Netherlands, pioneering work on electronic interfaces has been done by
the STEIM in Amsterdam, and naturally examples can also be found in France
(IRCAM, Grame, and others) and Germany. For now, however, I only wish to
plead for such laboratories as academic islands, as a starting point for research
in the arts, which are understood exclusively to be the experimental arts.
Only in recent years have we seen the creation of doctoral schools that also
support artistic research. Universities started special training programs for
PhD students, but do not have specific curricula for experiments in the arts.
The ORCiM program at the Orpheus Institute, restricted to music, is a proto-
typical example of a serious attempt to meet the needs of doctoral students in
music. In general, there is still a lot of ambiguity as to the definition of exper-
iment and research, as these notions are often fairly ill defined. The Schools
of Arts have a tendency to take a rather reactionary position in following a
strategy of preservation in an attempt merely to upgrade their existing activity.
Much of the “artistic research” conducted there, following the criteria outlined
in this paper, would fall through completely. Often one will hear them proclaim
the statement that the doctorate in the arts should be given to those who excel
in their art. This undermines the notion of both experiment and research.
Awarding doctorates to artists for mere excellence not only devalues those doc-
torates but also undermines them. I hold that doctorates should only be deliv-
ered to artists after proof of research competence and proof of relevant results.

References
Houellebecq, Michael. 2010. La carte et le Raes, Godfried-Willem. 2011. “Onderzoek
territoire. Paris: Flammarion. Translated in de kunst is experimentele kunst.”
by Gavin Bowd as The Map and the Territory Kunstzone: tijdschrift voor kunst en cultuur in
(London: Heinemann, 2011). het onderwijs 5 (May): 4–6.

59
 Tiny Moments
of Experimentation:
Kairos in the Liminal Space
of Performance

Kathleen Coessens
Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Orpheus Research Centre in Music

A concert performance of music seems, at first sight, a non-experimental,

well-prepared activity requiring considerable technical and instrumental skill,
background knowledge of context and composition, rehearsal, and interpreta-
tional fidelity to a tradition. However, small gaps—possibilities for experimen-
tation—emerge in the elaboration, preparation, and performance of a musi-
cian’s act, in the background of the musician’s world of highly skilled practices,
profound training, embodied schemata, and prepared interpretational expres-
sion. In the act of performance, in the liminal space between contingency and
the hidden background of artistic practice, kairos (which I translate as the artistic
opportune choice of action) can appear and challenge expected interpretation by
opening up the “here and now” of the performance.

t he a r ti s t ’ s pr a x i s : ex plo ratio n an d perFo rM an c e in spac e

a nd ti M e

How can the world of a performing artist, the artistic realm or space of his or
her activity, be described? The artist’s world is part of the ordinary world in
which humans—and thus also artists—live, dwell, and act. But it is also a gen-
erally isolated time-space related activity, often with untidy boundaries, with
lengthy hidden phases and short, revelatory appearances in the outer world.
This “outer world” may be unaware or have difficulty understanding the hid-
den, private artistic activity, endeavour, and training behind these moments of
public display. In the first place, what the artist does on stage does not necessar-
ily presuppose his or her artistic practice beyond the stage. Second, each per-
formance act opens a complex situation of sign-signification, totally focused
on the artistic enactment and temporary reality of the artwork, in which the
artist recedes into the background. Third, what possibly could be unveiled
or concealed by the artist about him or herself or about the artistic process is

61
 Kathleen Coessens

caught up in the interpretation or creation of meaning—whether that of the

audience or of the artist—linked to the artwork. Fourth, the enactment of the
artist always entails tacit, ineffable, and embodied aspects that remain resistant
to explanation.
However, artistic performances do not occur suddenly, rather they are backed
by interwoven parameters or spaces that together form the artist’s realm. It is
thus necessary to consider the situation of artistic performance as one part of
the broader artistic realm of the performer. Each unique artistic performance
is an instance, a moment of concentrated artistic endeavour. It is but the visible
manifestation of a long process of patient integration of multiple tacit dimen-
sions, which can be considered as spaces within a broad zone of exploration
in which to roam and to dwell, to mine and to borrow from (see “The Web of
Artistic Practice: A Background for Experimentation,” in the present volume).
At the same time, this zone’s constituent parts orient and influence the artist,
who is also a fundamental part of it. In this zone, the artist will experience dif-
ferent phases of action and reflection, on different levels: discovery, heuristics,
training, rehearsal, research, mimesis, instruction, interpretation, and so on.
Though often originally socially steered, the artist will develop a personal com-
mitment towards the possibilities and constraints, extensions and limits of this
idiosyncratic zone of exploration. This zone of exploration indeed implies, for
most of the time, a private, retired, or semi-private social position. The artist
is working, exploring, investigating, and reflecting on how to enact art. One
part of this process is a personal inquiry taking place in a self-protected, hid-
den social position; the other part is social, embedded in dialogue, education,
transmission, and exchange.
The explorations of the artist as well as the resulting performances offer
new opportunities, input, and experiences. Both enrich the artistic realm in a
dynamic movement between long processes of training, discovery, and creation
and moments of explicit enactment and interpretation, equilibrating skills and
choices, external influences, and inherent personality, technical training and
reflection, preparation and performance.

Fig. 1
62

Figure 1. Situation of performance and zone of exploration.

 Tiny Moments of Experimentation

The performance-act is situated in an open, public social space, which is usully

protected by the surrounding rituals and rules concerning the constituents of
the performance as well as the participators in the situation. Two aspects can
be distinguished.
A first aspect is the time-space frame of the performance, which is often
decided on a social basis: when, where, and how will the performance take
place. The ritualisation of the preparation and the social codes that define the
performance act as a public artistic act are, for both performers and audience,
fixed well in advance: how to behave, greet, applaud—even how to dress. They
can be considered as the contours, or as the frontier that precedes entering the
liminal space of performance: for the audience, this forms a bridge between
the ordinary world and the expected aesthetic experience, for the performer, it
signals a readiness to engage in the artistic act. In that sense, we can consider
the act of performance as temporally and spatially situated. It is inserted in the
chronos, the quantitative measure of time, and happens in a specific topos, a
place—a room, or a theatre, for example.
The second aspect of the situation of performance is the instance of the
performance itself, the inside of the performance, in which the performer cre-
ates the artwork, absorbed in the enactment, from a position of self-reflective
embodiment. The rules of cultural society and the specific chronos and topos
of the event require the performer to be “ready,” to have acquired and elabo-
rated the necessary cognitive and embodied patterns and trajectories capable
of sustaining and expressing that specific artistic act of performance out of his
or her broader web of artistic practice. But, once started, each performance
and, inside that performance, each instance of it, is enclosed in its own artistic
time and place and is enacted in moments of now reaching out towards the
whole act. In time-notions, an act of artistic performance is one whole, and
cannot be exposed in different phases: no revision, no reprise, no hesitations. It
is one holistic process unfolding in time and space. The movements themselves
are part of a process of embodied and reflective expectation and anticipation.
Once the act is launched, each gesture is the result of the previous one and the
origin of the next, each gesture adding, changing, and influencing the mean-
ing of what was before and what is to come. Performance time is fleeting and
constraining: movements unfold and succeed one another and even a silence
or immobility is but a tension or preparation for the embodied gesture towards
the next movement or sound; the movement is never in isolation. Internally
experienced time and spatialised, objective, analysable time merge into an
embodied time. This embodied time is experienced and realised through the
body and the gesture, withdrawn from ordinary or social time (chronos) into
a suspended time in which the embodied and gestural flexibility in the art-
work determines temporal suspension or elasticity. An embodied narrative of
meaning takes place. Moreover, the dynamic process of the performance-act
happens not only in time but also in space. The movements of the body incor-
porate the surrounding space, linking interiority and exteriority. The space of
the performance, being the space of the performer, becomes part of the body,
or the body part of the space. The artist enacts (with) a high perceptual and kin-

63
 Kathleen Coessens

aesthetic sensitivity of the space, the objects, bodies, atmosphere, of everything

that is “in touch” with his or her body, extending the body and its unfolding
gestures into the material surroundings and objects.
The theatre space changes completely when a performance starts. The empty
space becomes an artistic space, an integral part of the artistic act, changing the
space into a lived artistic embodied realm. The floor is no longer “the floor of a
theatre building,” the walls are no longer ordinary walls; they become part of or
even “disappear” into the creation of the artistic embodied act. Position thus
becomes disposition: where the artist is and what he or she does or will do, his
or her spatial position, and the nature of the material and relatedness of body
and space, merge completely in the unfolding of the performance. The artist’s
performance involves the creation of a new time-space, or an “in between”
time-space: a liminal space of artistic performance that challenges ordinary
quantitative time-space experiences or chronos-topoi.

zone of exploration situation of performance

time-space broad realm of discovery time-space of performance instance of performance

and training
different phases/moments

personal preparation, dwelling, readiness acute attention, enactment

commitment heuristics, reflection, contact
training, etc.

social private/ retired / ritualisation / roles performance as pub-

position semi-private relation to the audience lic act of self-reflective
—> hidden position embodiment
—> dialogue position

Table 1

Kairos i n t he ac t o F p er Fo rM a nc e 1

How can creativity happen in the act of performance itself ? Everything is pre-
pared, rehearsed: is there a space left for experimentation? Yes there is, because
the act of performance contains unpredictable elements, occasions, or con-
straints, urging creativity to emerge, urging the artist to “undertake something.”
The assemblage of the spaces of artistic practice, of preparation, and of per-
formance in one “here and now,” in one act, creates a liminal space of crea-
tivity, in between the artistic background and the focus of attention. It may

1 This part of the text has its origins in Coessens (2009).

64
 Tiny Moments of Experimentation

be construed as a laboratory where an important experiment will happen:

everything is prepared, space and time controlled, actors and objects in place.
While, in contrast to the laboratory, an experiment in the concert situation is
not expected, a comparable rigour and meticulous preparation is put forth. A
heightened awareness tracks both the artist and the scientist: control, observa-
tion, and action. However in the concert situation, the performer is part of the
event, while in the laboratory, the scientist places him- or herself outside the
experiment. Moreover, the laboratory researcher expects something “experi-
mental” from the actions of the event, which is normally not the case for the
performer.
However, in this liminal space of performance, possible experimentation
can emerge as “kairos,” a Greek word meaning “a propitious moment for deci-
sion or action.” For the ancient Greeks, different contexts, aims, trajectories,
and situations require new choices, decisions, and ad hoc reflection. Choices
can never be settled, can never rest on facts and principles. Humans have to
make decisions in particular situations: they have to act in a specific context.
Moreover, decisions and choices, analyses and commitments have to be made
at the right moment, at the opportune time, the kairos. Aristotle considers the
kairos as the propitious decision, made in an individual and concrete dynamic
situation. He uses the word to describe the art of rhetoric, meaning that the
general rules of rhetoric are void as general forms, but have to be applied flex-
ibly in different situations, not foreseeable by the rhetoricians (Aristotle 1925,
1354 [Rhetoric 1.1.14]; Kinneavy and Eskin 2000). Rhetoricians have to enter the
situational context, to interfere, play with it, react to present circumstances in
an appropriate manner, led by virtue, equity, fitness, and occasion.
What then can kairos mean for the performer?
From the point of view of the artist, the seemingly continuous unfolding of
gestures in the act of performance is confirmed by a heightened awareness and
an embodied and cognitive track of this continuity, always ready to reassess
background and focus. This attention implies a fast tracking of possibilities
and constraints and quick attuning between proprioception and exterocep-
tion. The artist will have to cope with unexpected conditions that may suddenly
hinder the attuning of body and space. He or she will prevent this as much as
possible, by already “sensing” the space, by preparing his or her body and its
“touch” with that space. The kairos of the artist concerns the faculty and reac-
tion to cope with the unexpected, with the particular constraints of the artistic
situatedness. It concerns some expectation of the “unexpected,” of an impres-
sion, a noise, a friction that interrupts or questions the prepared narrative.
Just as every performance is different—a different space, public, mood, time,
context—every decision in a performance, every commitment is specific, par-
ticular, and context-linked. Thus, decisions and choices, analyses and commit-
ments have to be made at the right moment, at the opportune time, the kairos.
The artist has to be alert, to react, to contest, to interfere, whenever his or her
responsibility can make that little difference needed. This offers us a transla-
tion of Aristotle’s “virtue” into artistic virtue: “Through the performance, the
artist establishes artistic virtue, acting with a sense of pride as well as humility,

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knowing that, well-prepared, the artist has to be prepared for the unexpected.
In a broader sense, virtue refers to the sincere participation and interaction in
and the cultural contribution to the art world” (Coessens 2009, 278).
The second notion connected to kairos is equity, in rhetoric another moral
notion. It can be reconsidered in this context as the idea of artistic balance, of
sensing what is appropriate and how it can be revealed in the particular situa-
tion of the performance. The equity principle aims at a kind of respect towards
and a fundamental belief in art, one’s own artistic act, the other artists, and the
audience, even in very difficult situations. Equity is to be found in the inten-
tion, not in the action itself, but in the underlying purpose. Equity aims at read-
justing an imbalanced situation through intelligence, character, and good will.
Different environmental settings and different audiences will require adapta-
tion and continuous revision of interaction with other performing artists.
Fitness then, in the moment of kairos, concerns vigilance, and the possibil-
ity of reaction. It implies alertness of the performer to the sensibilities of the
audience, as well as fitting the artistic discourse to broader social, cultural,
and moral sensibilities. In this sense, the artist has to make his or her audience
attentive. Fitness allows the artist to draw out, bring to the fore, and display
energising forces and imagination, building on the web of artistic practice, in
due measure and proportion.
Finally, the notion of occasion implies a feeling for the appropriate moment
of creative interventions, an awareness of open possibilities, and the ability to
cope creatively with unexpected opportunities. The performing and situated
musician, in the liminal space created by the confrontation of dispositions,
preparations, and the inescapable moment of performance, has to be alert, to
react, to interfere, to decide each instance as it arises, because no rules exist for
the unprecedented. Kairos implies the coming together of “knowing how” and
“knowing when”; it is the faculty of observing and realising the available means
of artistry in any given case. The multiple choices and decisions, ephemeral as
they are, are fundamental and creative ways of travelling between background
and focus, between deep artistic endeavour and immediate praxis, between
movement and aesthetics, between self and expression.
Spaces for experimentation are, both in science and in art, often constrained
by different fixed parameters. In the case of performance, the musician as
expert has elaborated an interpretation to stick to. Moreover, the time and
space, expression, and content of performance have been fixed by traditional
and cultural rules. However, unexpected elements in the situation of perfor-
mance can open gaps for experimentation, where the performer can explore
a new movement, sound, arch, or intention not previously elaborated. In the
action, he or she will have to make a qualitative judgement about it and will
reflect afterwards on the importance of it, as well as on how to repeat it in other
situations. This new element, explored in the contingency of events, can then
become a constructive part of further interpretations.

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 Tiny Moments of Experimentation

References
Aristotle. 1925. The “Art” of Rhetoric. Kinneavy, James L., and Catherine R. Eskin.
Translated by John Henry Freese. 2000. “Kairos in Aristotle’s Rhetoric.” In
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Written Communication 17 (3): 432–44.
/ Loeb Classical Library.
Coessens, Kathleen. 2009. “Musical
Performance and ‘Kairos’: Exploring the
Time and Space of Artistic Resonance.”
International Review of the Aesthetics and
Sociology of Music 40 (2): 269–81.

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 The Web of Artistic Practice:
A Background for Experimentation

Kathleen Coessens
Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Orpheus Research Centre in Music

i ntr o duc ti o n
Beneath the artist’s apparent expertise and creation—revealed in artistic real-
isations such as composition or performance—a complex domain of experi-
ence, knowledge, and actions is hidden and difficult to pin down. This domain
consists of different tacit dimensions, which can only be made visible, under-
standable, by theorising, or by the introspection and interpretation of the art-
ist. Moreover, within the process of creation, the artist is seldom consciously
aware of these dimensions, the focus at that moment being creation itself—
some artistic idea or aim. The tools of the artist, knowledge, expertise, experi-
ences, and actions present in his or her creative endeavour, remain in the back-
ground of this act. It is often only after the act of creation, that some reflection
or recollection, as a kind of re-enactment of the background, is possible.
That background is the subject of this article. Beyond “inspiration,” all artis-
tic improvisation and experimentation is enhanced by what I call an “artistic
web of practice,” which is both culturally shared and idiosyncratic—thus, spe-
cific for each artist. This web of expertise functions as a kind of dynamic artis-
tic background, an internalised and integrated whole on which the artist relies
for his or her creativity. It is constituted by five dimensions that refer to the
complex interactions and exchanges between the musician and his or her envi-
ronment: embodied know-how, personal knowledge, the environmental, the
cultural-semiotic, and the receptive dimension. Together they form a “web” of
artistic practice, woven repeatedly by the artist over multiple periods of edu-
cation, exploration, and performance, offering a solid but agile support and
augmenting artistic expertise. The personal artistic search of the musician in
acquiring his or her “web of artistic practice” is a creative path: there is no sin-
gle curriculum, training, or personality, nor one history of how to become an
artist. Musicians have to creatively recognise and recombine the dispositions
they possess, those they desire to acquire, and those that happen to arrive by
contingency and through experience.

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 Kathleen Coessens

Z o ne oF ex plo ratio n : tacit d iMen sio n s beh in d th e act o F

c r eati o n

Patiently, over years of rehearsing, studying, listening, and playing, an artist

builds up a web of artistic practice that offers a space or zone of exploration:
a rich domain of skills, knowledge, aesthetics, and expertise on which to rely.
The artist can roam and dwell in it, mine and borrow from it. At the same time,
it will orient and influence the artist. This zone of exploration provides back-
ground knowledge for the artistic act. Through patient integration of different
phases of the multiple tacit dimensions of the zone of exploration, the artist
can construct again and again his or her musical narrative and comprehension
of a score. This zone contains five dimensions: embodied expertise, personal
knowledge, the semiotic-symbolic, the ecological, and the interactive/self-re-
flective dimension. These dimensions refer to the complex interactions and
exchanges between the artist and his or her environment, exchanges that hap-
pen over time and in different places, and are pervaded by the limits of human
culture and human biology. Together they form a “web” of artistic practice,
woven and re-woven by the artist over multiple phases of education, explora-
tion, and creation. This web of artistic practice constitutes a robust but flexible
scaffold and is continually developing and augmenting artistic expertise.

Fig. 1

e M bo di ed a r tistic Kn oW - h o W

Every human being has a primary embodied relation to the world, reciprocally
interacting with and modifying the environment (Crowther 1993). Though, in
the action of the artist, this embodiment is a skilled, high-level attuning of the
physical and perceptual modalities towards the world—whether in the form
of materials, tools, or instruments—in a kind of unified activity in which qual-
ities and sensations come together. Artistic creation means taking action in an
embodied way: every process of creation contains instances of embodied per-

70

Figure 1. Tacit dimensions of the artist’s act.

 The Web of Artistic Practice

formance combining different skills, perceptual capacities, and sensorimotor

coordination. The body of the artist is his or her first medium of expression.
A first important aspect of this dimension is its synaesthetic and multi-modal
nature, which brings together the sensorimotor, intellectual, and embodied
capacities of the artist. Etymologically, synaesthesis comes from “syn,” together,
and “aesthesia,” senses, implying an attachment or union of the different senses.
Synaesthesis means the simultaneous presence of, or translation between,
different perceptual sensations. Thus musicians sense their music physically,
composers hear what they are writing down: different sensory capacities inter-
act and compound in the focus towards a total grasp of what is—or is expected
to be—created. Multi-modality means the multi-sensory interaction of differ-
ent perceptual modalities, as the artist moves seamlessly between different
modes of interaction; from visual to touch to movement to idea; from body
to sensation to intellect—and vice versa. This synaesthetic and multi-modal
arousal of the artist in the process of creation is a “total” or holistic experi-
ence: an experience in which the whole body and mind, the inner and the outer
world, are moved as a whole, as a unified striving towards a creative purpose.
This creative purpose is neither clear nor defined, but is part of the process of
aiming towards and striving for a yet ineffable endpoint. The endpoint will be
an artwork or performance, but the purpose itself is, in part, ineffable, being
directed and created by interactions between motives that are conscious and
unconscious, embodied and cognitive, perceptual and kinaesthetic, and inner
and outer. Moreover, this “total” experience often happens in a kind of dimen-
sionless flow in which temporal and spatial awareness of the here and the now,
as well as a conceptual and conscious awareness of the self, recede in front of
the creative act, the focal point. It thus recalls Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s (1990)
notion of flow: an optimal experience of focal attention and dimensionless
motivation in acts of creativity, sustained by synaesthetic and multi-modal pro-
cesses of embodiment.
A second aspect of the embodied dimension is the embodied know-how.
Artists acquire skills by way of mimesis, instruction, training, and personal
experience. Society imprints itself on the individual, often imperceptibly, by
repeating social practices, responses and experiences, and patterns of conduct
and lifestyle: language, the way we eat, speak, how we walk, how we behave, our
outlook on the world, what we like (Bourdieu 1980). Artistic society and the
prevailing aesthetic culture have an important impact on young artists. How
to handle an instrument, how to hold a pencil, how to merge colours, and how
to cope with space, sound, or materials are imposed in a quite imperceptible
way by multiple repetition and instruction by a master, and are integrated by
the pupil through admiration and imitation of artistic heroes and cult objects.
Artists will end up with an artistic habitus, having incorporated traditional and
cultural embodied ways of “how to be an artist” (Coessens 2011). Moreover, as
the subject proposed to and imposed on artists—artistic skills—appeals to
their way of being and interests, they will embody these skills and know-how
to a much deeper and more durable point of expertise than more generally
socially imposed practices. Artists, at certain points in their artistic develop-

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 Kathleen Coessens

ment, will search consciously or unconsciously for better, easier, and more
complex embodied ways to express themselves. The instruction will be sus-
tained by harsh training imposed on the body, compelling it to act in certain
ways, depending on time, space, materials, and circumstances. Artistic prac-
tices emerge—embodied schemes that structure perception, thought, action,
and communication in the artistic process of creation. They acquire an embod-
ied artistic logic, an expert habitus, a seemingly natural and spontaneous yet
very elaborated and sophisticated praxis of how to behave, cope, and think
artistically, and thus how to engage in a process of creation. This aspect of the
embodied dimension is linked to—and overlaps somewhat with—the dimen-
sion of personal knowledge.
The third aspect of the embodied dimension is the interaction of the artist
with the tool, the material, and the instrument. In the course of acquiring the
expertise, a special kind of relationship develops: the tool, instrument, or mate-
rial, initially approached as something alien to the novice, as something “out
there,” gradually divulges its secrets and becomes a familiar part of the body’s
activities. Finally, the tool is totally integrated in the act, being part of the art-
ist’s total experience. It has become a bodily extension. Karl Popper (1972, 238–
39) mentions the term “exosomatic development,” a development outside the
body, meaning that humans extend their bodily and cognitive capacities by way
of external means: if you cannot see, you wear glasses; if you are not fast enough,
you use a car; if your memory is limited, your computer will remember it for
you. Andy Clark (1997, 179) calls this human propensity to bodily extension
“external scaffolding,” referring to a scaffold, a construction that helps reach
higher levels. A sustained incorporation, an embodiment of the formerly exter-
nal tool, leads to a seamless integration. For example, musicians, in a very real
sense, physically connect to their instrument, which, although an extension of
the body, is experienced as an integral part of the body and the bodily capaci-
ties. An expert violin player and his or her violin fuse together in the moment
of artistic performance; the duality of human being and instrument is substi-
tuted with the unique experience of one extended subject. The intense focus
on the aesthetic outcome—the music—makes the means (i.e., the instrument,
the chords, and the reflection on the interaction) recede into the background.
The same happens in other arts: the experience of the material, its resistance,
warmth, and the ineffable way of handling it in the act of creation, merge into
one embodied and holistic experience. The fusing together of the artist’s bod-
ily capacities with the material and aesthetic possibilities of the tool can thus
lead to an unexpected, qualitative outcome. The interaction between the bod-
ily, genetic possibilities of the artist, his or her acquired skills, and the tool,
can thus exceed the limitations of both the body and the tool, outstripping the
pure addition of human capacities and material possibilities. Triantafyllou and
Triantafyllou’s (1995, 69) remark concerning dolphins is certainly appropriate
to the artists’ embodied expertise. Clark rephrases their observations: “By thus
controlling and exploiting local environmental structure, the fish is able to
produce fast starts and turns that make our ocean-going vessels look clumsy,
ponderous, and laggardly . . . it is even possible for a fish’s swimming efficiency

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 The Web of Artistic Practice

to exceed 100 percent” (Clark 1997, 219). A Stradivarius is enthralling only as

the pure voice of an excellent violinist; a chunk of clay becomes an enchanting
and cherished object only through the hands of the sculpting artist. I should
acknowledge that the extension of the body is in both cases somewhat differ-
ent: the music being created by way of the instrument, the artwork created with
the material itself. In the first case, the realisation, music is different from both
the maker and the tool, whereas in the second case, the artwork is the artisti-
cally realised material.

p er s o na l K no Wledge

The notion of personal knowledge was first described by Michael Polanyi, who
offered an interesting view on what scientific activity can tell us about the back-
ground of knowledge acts and heuristic processes (Polanyi 1958). Polanyi anal-
yses the notion of personal knowledge on a dynamic level, paying attention to
the activity and the process of scientific endeavour. In the whole knowledge
process, he distinguishes between forms of knowledge involved. These are
linked to what will be the focus and what is subsidiary, or, what is the subject
and the background of the knowledge act.
Polanyi (1958, 69) draws a broad distinction between a passive, implicit, or
tacit component and an active, more or less explicit component. Obviously, in
the act of knowledge, we are dealing with an articulated statement of explicit
knowledge from a focal awareness and critical position. But if I may use a met-
aphor—one not used by Polanyi: this is only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath
all this there is always a mass of tacit knowledge that remains unarticulated
and a-critical, of which the “knower” has only a subsidiary awareness. Grene,
deepening Polanyi’s approach formulates it as following “Our explicit aware-
ness, the focal core of consciousness, is always founded in and carried by the
tacit acceptance of something not explicit, which binds, heavily and concretely,
ourselves to and within our world. This means . . . that knowledge is always
personal. . . . For only the explicit, formulable core of knowledge can be trans-
ferred, neutrally, from person to person. Its implicit base (since it is not verbal-
ized and cannot be formulated and so impersonalized) must be the groping . . .
of someone” (Grene [1966] 1974, 24–25). These tacit aspects of knowledge are
the background parts that we do not question, but take for granted and use as
if these are a natural part of our biological being—and thus not acquired. As
thus, they are in some sense “embodied.”
Personal knowledge acts are closely linked, being inevitably determined by
and implicated in the environmental or contextual background. The knower
can express him- or herself only within a system of convictions: a framework
made of his or her tacit assent and intellectual passions, the prevalent spa-
tio-temporal context, and the sharing of an idiom and affiliation of a like-
minded community. Polanyi (1958, 278–82) names this the fiduciary mode or
framework. This framework contains what Quine called the “web of belief ”
(Quine and Ullian 1970): every action, perception, and proposition, and every
human “experience,” whether experienced by a layperson, an artist, or a scien-

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 Kathleen Coessens

tific researcher, takes place in a complex multidimensional frame of actions,

knowledge, and experience, which is itself difficult to account for. In this per-
sonal web of belief, the input of previous generations, cultural ideas, tech-
nology, education, and science, and an individual’s identity and commitment
merge together in a present act: “Traditions are transmitted to us from the
past, but they are our own interpretations of the past, at which we have arrived
within the context of our own immediate problems” (Polanyi 1958, 160).
Polanyi thus explains that acts of knowledge are influenced by many param-
eters of which the actor is most of the time unaware. In the articulation of
knowledge, this ineffable domain of tacit knowledge, personal commitment,
and subsidiary awareness inevitably disappears. Knowledge is then the visible
outcome of these complex processes of interaction between the outer world—
social, intellectual, educational—and the researcher—his or her commitment,
intellectual capacities, personality: every act of knowledge is an act of “personal
knowledge” (Polanyi 1958, 62–64, 315–21).
The notion of personal knowledge certainly offers an interesting line of
approach to the artist’s act.
An artist’s personal knowledge is made up of his or her personal expertise,
previous experiences, education, embeddedness in a culture and a community
of artists, and his or her cultural stock, as well as the influence of the artist’s
own character and temperament.
The artist’s actions and outcomes are influenced and constrained by prevail-
ing ideas about art, cultural currents, and aesthetic context. Some of the param-
eters are well known, others are present, but in an unconscious way. Moreover,
creativity—what is original, what will be accepted as art—can change over time
and place. Creative acts are thus sustained or/and constrained by the context.
And these contexts differ: as humans grow up and live in other cultures, dif-
ferent physical and social environments can stimulate or discourage creativity.
Moreover, artistic creativity is dependent on an appropriate community of like-
minded people or experts in the domain. Prevailing currents and aesthetic cul-
tural rules, implicit and explicit, will determine the possible limits of creativity.
Thus, for example, when a more abstract or expressive style—abstract expres-
sionism—prevails, more introverted artists using association and improvisa-
tion will be increasingly appreciated; in contrast, a more realistic current will
attract more extroverted characters, interested in precision of style and reali-
ty-directed approaches (Abuhamdeh and Csikszentmihalyi 2004).
Broader cultural ideas and mentalities concerning creativity also influence
artists’ activity. Western culture appreciates autonomous and independent
individual creations, considering a person as “a bounded, unique, more or less
integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of aware-
ness, emotion, judgment, and action organized into a distinctive whole and set
contrastively both against other such wholes and against a social and natural
background” (Geertz 1975, 48). Certain other, non-Western cultures are more
community-oriented: a person is defined by social relations, dependent on the
thoughts, feelings, and actions of the community. Humans here will act in func-
tion of the anticipated expectation of others and social standards. In Japan, for

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 The Web of Artistic Practice

example, the artist is expected to respect group creativity and social together-
ness (Tatsuno 1990). Balinese culture requires respect for the tradition and for
the community: groups can be somewhat innovative and original, but no indi-
vidual artist may transgress the traditional stereotypes of music. Moreover, the
higher in status the traditional form of art, the less deviancy is accepted: thus
innovative artistic endeavour concerning religious artefacts or ritual dances in
Bali is highly discouraged (Ludwig 1992, 456).
However, the integration of these aspects will depend on the artist.
Broader cultural values and socio-cultural contexts are integrated as one part
of personal knowledge, the other part being the merging of the education
and identity of the artist, his or her commitment, desires, and character, and,
of course, the important interaction between the artist and the outer back-
ground. In that sense, the artist will merge aspects of the public and the private,
of ambition and commitment. But these aspects already refer to another tacit
dimension: the receptive-reflective dimension, which will be approached later
in this article.

c ultur a l - s eM i o ti c c o des

No tools and no symbols mean no art. Art always has a material layer that is
culturally defined. Semiotic and symbolic systems provide the medium—tools,
languages, codes—that permit the artist to translate his or her creative thinking
and acting into something durable. The discovery, translation, transmission,
interpretation, and recording of art depend upon these tools. Cultures develop
semiotic systems and develop themselves because of the creation and evolution
of these systems. Deeply rooted in socio-cultural styles, values, and meanings,
as well as linked to technological evolution and cultural means, these codes
and rules will constrain present or further possibilities of conception, inter-
pretation, or adaptation. Yuri Lotman (1990) uses the word “semiosphere” to
refer to the specific symbolic and semiotic space of a culture. A semiosphere is
a coherent whole of interconnected systems of signs, symbols, codes, and signi-
fications in a culture that permits its members to communicate with others and
express themselves. Thus the photographer will depend on the existing visual
media and the prevailing state of image-technology; the musician will rely on
the different possibilities of graphics concerning score and acoustic signals for
sound-creation; the sculptor will use prevailing codes concerned with form and
space, perspective, and material, or techniques. Each domain of art has its spe-
cific media and semiotic fields, each with different levels.
Though this dimension refers explicitly to the more technical, symbol- and
tool-directed side of the creative act acquired by education, it is embedded in
the preceding dimensions of ineffable bodily expertise and cognitive personal
experiences. Only through the possible semiotisation of the artist’s creative
process, thoughts, and emotions can art “happen,” exist, and be experienced
by others as art. The artist has at his or her disposal “signs” that are part of the
prevailing semiosphere: previously created, accepted, and transmitted struc-
tures of signs and codes with accompanying rules, which, when assembled and

75
 Kathleen Coessens

constructed, bear meaning and can transmit meaning. The artist cannot escape
the existing codes, but will construct within the available systems of transla-
tion a proper rhetoric, style, language, or specific discourse. Often, artists will
make use of different semiotic systems, merging or superposing them hori-
zontally—for example, text and image, or image and sound—or vertically—by
mixing older and newer codes and languages together—creating polysemous
works. As the signs will be superposed, contrasted, or related, different mean-
ings will be articulated, and contrasted with, or added to, other meanings. The
artist thus engages in an experimental process in which he or she, by way of
an existing semiotic-symbolic system, will create an idiosyncratic “montage,”
composition, or arrangement. This is a difficult process, translating artful feel-
ing and thinking into a realised creation—or into a created “reality.” The artist
has to jump from a preverbal and predetermined creative feeling towards an
embodied creation. Julia Kristeva (1998, 143), a French semiotician, uses the
word “chora” to indicate the moment when this feeling-thinking is not yet
realised, embodied, or translated. By using an existing medium, the artist will
translate his or her artistic ideas into something tangible. In a certain sense,
the artist will thereby “re-order” reality, “colonise” the semiotic sphere, change
aspects of existing dimensions, and insert new perspectives in the world, by
way of rhetorical figures and arrangements of images, objects, bodies, move-
ments, forms, sounds, or graphics—depending on his or her artistic field. The
painter will reorder the composition of the real scene; the musician will notate
the rhythms and nuances of sounds; the actor will have to organise language,
sound, and kinaesthetic effects in space. Each artist will have to cope with dif-
ferent levels of semiotic translation, as the complexity of the relation between
creative thought and created object has to be bridged: imagination has to meet
the world. The link between the creative process of thought and the reality of
art is met precisely by this kind of articulation of a semiotic space. The creative
act has to be captured and rendered in the form of notes or drafts, improvisa-
tions or scores, text or sound, movement or images.
The translation and realisation will be unique in light of the decisions, dis-
tance, and “signature” of the artist. These three notions—decisions, distance,
and signature—refer to the way in which the artist appropriates the semiotic
system and will model it in an original and idiosyncratic way. The decisions of
the artist concern the choice, articulation, and arrangement of semiotic mean-
ings and symbolic codes in the artistic space, and depend on his or her skill
and predispositions. The distance refers to the separation, the gap the author
chooses—not necessarily consciously—to install between the semiotic system
as accepted or transmitted by the prevailing culture—for example the codes
of abstract impressionism—and the artist’s idiosyncratic use of it—his or her
own art. Finally, the artist’s signature is the convergence of both decisions and
distance. By signature, I do not mean the literal name signed on the work of art,
but the figurative signature referring to the personal and unique whole of the
characteristics, traits, methods, and codes carried by all the works of an artist.

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 The Web of Artistic Practice

e c o lo gi c a l envi r o n Ment

All experience starts from a “being in the world,” an engagement with the envi-
ronment: “Man’s sense of space is closely related to his sense of self, which is
in an intimate transaction with his environment” (Hall 1966, 63). Gibson (1966,
[1979] 1986) presents a general ecological approach to the environment and
offers us some starting points for considering the importance of this dimen-
sion for the artist. He points to the fact that seemingly undirected and unde-
termined potentialities prevail in the exchange between organisms and envi-
ronment. Gibson ([1979] 1986, 139) uses the term “affordances” to describe
these possibilities, which derive from elements of the environment and are
potentially “offered” to other—human—organisms. The affording relation is
limited to what can be afforded and what can be accepted or assumed. Basic
affordances are provided by the natural environment: air affords human beings
possibilities of breathing, moving, visual perception, odour; water affords the
possibilities of drinking, washing, sailing; the ground affords living organisms
the surface for life, for standing and sitting, for equilibrium, place, movement,
and manipulation; trees afford shade, fruit, energy, oxygen, and carbon. Other
persons and living animals afford rich and complex experiences, communica-
tion, sexuality, and reciprocity, for example, and so exceed the purely biologi-
cal environment. As human beings invent and create further artefacts, objects,
or theories, these again will offer affordances and increase possibilities. The
observer may or may not perceive or attend to the affordance, but the affor-
dance, being invariant, is potentially there to be perceived and can be aroused
by some need and interaction (ibid.).
For the artist, interaction with the environment, often unacknowledged, is of
considerable importance. All artistic practice is situated: it occurs in an ecolog-
ical and material setting that creates specific conditions that have an impact on
artists and their activity. Artists fundamentally relate to their environment, be it
a natural one—the scene of nature that a painter observes, the existing clay for
a modeller, or birdsong for a musician—or an artificial one—the possibilities
of loudspeakers at a concert, technological aids for a sculptor. The surrounding
environment is the basis for every artistic endeavour. Affordances offer on the
one hand an enormous creative pool of possible interactions between human
beings and elements of the environment, neither determinable nor knowable
in advance: interactions that are ecologically valuable, creative, and inexhaust-
ible. On the other hand, affordances can also be a source of disturbance or
can limit certain actions—such as bad materials or acoustics, spoiled water, or
heavy light or darkness. In the realisation of a creative idea, these ecological
settings do not only interfere with artists’ practices: artists will try to capture
as best they can the available affordances while those affordances permit or
constrain artists to realise their ideas. An important aspect of creative activity
is the possibility of coping with these affordances and bending them towards
artistic endeavour.
Three aspects can be considered in the exchange between artist and environ-
ment: the presence of the environment, the coping response of the artist, and
the influence of the artist.

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 Kathleen Coessens

First, the surrounding space, its dimensions, colours, the incidence of light,
the temperature and degree of humidity, or the furniture will have some influ-
ence or impact on the artist’s practice. A musician, for example, will always be
confronted with a surrounding space with the acoustical characteristics of the
surrounding space, its dimensions, colours, furniture, air, and temperature, as
well as the presence of people and the instruments of other musicians. The
musician will have to adjust his or her embodied expertise to the situation, to
the new parameters or different settings of a performance. A painter will be
confronted with the affordances of the prevailing light, seasonal alterations,
the shades of paint colour available—and later on, the conditions of light and
the positioning of the painting in the museum or gallery will influence its
brightness and the public’s perception of it. The environment, being what it is,
will always influence artists and their creations in some direction. But the more
an artist has developed her or his expertise, the better she or he will cope with
these affordances.
This means that, second, the artist can take advantage of the environmental
cues. The fusion of the artist’s endeavour and the affordances of the environ-
ment can, by creatively joining both capacities, lead to unexpected outcomes.
This is a point I mentioned above concerning the embodied dimension. The
specific activity of the artist, by way of its holistic—perceptual, cognitive, and
embodied—endeavour for creation, implies that the artist has a high sensibil-
ity and an extremely profound—but often latent and ineffable—awareness of
certain aspects of the surroundings. The influence of the environment will be
received by the artist at once — even if these elements are in the background,
the artist has a heightened awareness of it — thus, he or she will take advantage
of positive environmental incentives, not only compensating for poor or inade-
quate situations but also upgrading them towards new interesting, stimulating
inputs. This requires a subtle interplay between the artist and the environment:
many adjustments have to be made to surpass eventual limitations, outstrip-
ping the pure addition of human capacities and material possibilities.
Third, all art happens in a space and is influenced by the surrounding space,
but at the same time all art creates a new space by experimenting with it. The
artist creates a materiality, be it sounds, graphics, or sculptures, that impinges
on the existing materiality, moving it and chasing its habitual appearance away.
The artist recreates, changes the existing space, and at the same time, creates
his or her art. Thus, art, being influenced first by the prevailing ecological set-
tings, changes these settings by its own coming into existence. It inserts some
strangeness into the existing environment, changing the previous possible
focuses and backgrounds, adding new cues and points of interest, sensations,
and perceptions, and exceeding the original spatio-temporal interpretations.
The room and its inherent noise, light, furniture, and colours will be differ-
ently perceived and become different at the moment the artist creates. Art thus
creates new spaces because it creates new meanings, adds other meanings, and
changes the scope and the focus proper in relation to a specific environment.

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 The Web of Artistic Practice

i nter ac ti o n
In that environment, the artist’s act always encounters the other in the creative
process, whether another artist or community of artists, listeners or audiences,
the public, society, critics, friends and relatives, or, last but not least, him- or
herself. I have already noted the impact of different people and of educational
environment, family, and surrounding communities of artists on the artist’s
development, leading to idiosyncratic personal knowledge. But during the
process of creation, behind the artistic activity, the other is present, whether in
person, in judgement or in the self-reflection of the artist.
An artist is always surrounded by others, from an intimate level to a distant
and public level, influencing, acknowledging, encouraging, evaluating, criticis-
ing, or discouraging his or her artistic output. A first—seemingly distant—level
of relations that influences the artist is his or her participation in humanity:
the moral, ideological, and emotional commitment to humankind. Here, for
example, the impact of natural, geopolitical, national, or international events
can bother or trigger the artist, offering some unexpected point of view or
subject—war, catastrophe, rape. At a less distant level, there are relationships
that influence the possibility of artistic creation, the quest for funds, public-
ity, and financial or moral sustenance, and ideological concerns that influence
the dissemination of artistic products: non-profit organisations or media-con-
cerns, critics, and the audience (Crane 1992). Other artists often inspire, not
necessarily by being present, but by way of their own artistic creations. On the
private level, personal, intimate relations can inspire or discourage the artist;
intimate relations offer a mirror to the artist, merging the personal and the
professional. The ups and downs of personal relations can enhance or destroy
artistic commitment.
The artist will also be confronted with him- or herself, with a self-reflective
awareness of his or her position in and impact on the world, by way of personal
and creative activity. The artist’s experience is traversed by doubts and dreams,
by self-reflective questioning leading to a self-narrative in which the artist
develops a “thinking dialogue between me and myself ” (Arendt 1978, 187). This
reflection shows itself as the capacity to observe, judge, monitor, and decide
about the self and its actions and can become a necessary tool for evaluating
and valorising one’s own actions as well as bringing the personal narrative into
harmony with the appreciation and critique of the other.

e M er genc e oF a Web o F a r t istic prac tic e

Many decisions and trials of artistic creation are prepared in the exploration
phase, hidden from the public. Artists continuously integrate different tacit
dimensions—embodied expertise, personal knowledge, ecological environ-
ment-cues, cultural-semiotic codes, and interactivity. These dimensions can
become an explicit part of an artist’s detailed practices and research. Searching
for the right bodily schemata and structures will imply the mastery of artistic
technical difficulties. As all human experience occurs in a specific spatial-tem-
poral context, the adjustment of one’s own actions to the given settings will be

79
 Kathleen Coessens

mastered through a long period of practice and training, offering a broad per-
sonal knowledge. The artist will struggle with, handle, and integrate the differ-
ent facets of these tacit dimensions in moving towards a higher level of expert
artistry. They will be tacitly integrated in an interpretative and creative process
in a succession of always-unique confrontations of artist, environment, and
artistic object. Once acquired, they form a whole, a kind of habitus, an artistic
expertise or tacit knowledge: the web of artistic practice. This web of artistic
practice constitutes a robust but flexible scaffold and is continually developing
and augmenting artistic expertise. The metaphor of the web is crucial because
the instances of these different dimensions are linked in multiple ways, are
appealed to at different moments, and merge into one another, receding and
reappearing again and again in artistic practice. They are dynamic in the phase
of exploration and become embedded in the artistic result.
Two remarks remain to be formulated.
In the first place, we should not forget that the web of artistic practice is never
finished. Artistic endeavour always remains a dynamic process. Artistic activity
will each time vary depending on the particular situation, and the artist will
have to readjust all prior acquired schemata, (re)creating his or her art, reweav-
ing his or her web. The artist will have to cope with new or different aspects
of those tacit dimensions, exploring new situations every time, adapting and
readjusting skills and expertise to evolving internal and external parameters—
drawing upon embodied skills, personal knowledge, semiotic codes, environ-
ment, self-reflexivity, and the presence of others.
Second, the expertise an artist acquires can only be constructed by way of
conceptual and embodied internalisation and blending of these dimensions
in a fundamentally idiosyncratic manner. The previous description of these
dimensions does not imply that an artist will observe these dimensions and
then take elements out of an external world to put some of them in an order
through some kind of handling or construction, turning it into an aesthetic
object as if following a manual. On the contrary, prevailing elements of the
tacit dimensions are mirrored, received, and integrated in the artist’s internal
world, in a unique way. There, they can be considered as different mental or
conceptual spaces, or as flexible embodied and cognitive schemata. It is thus
not the external world itself—the way these tacit dimensions can be described
by observation—that is extrapolated by an artist into his or her creative pro-
cess, but the internalisation of these dimensions in the artist’s mind and body.
These different input-spaces—or aspects of them—can then be blended into
a new space, a creative mental and/or embodied idea, which finds its transla-
tion into the external world through the creation of an artefact. Moreover, this
dynamic process will be repeated in the creative activity of the artist, each time
in slightly different settings, thus increasing the flexibility and differentiation
of acquired schemata, augmenting the artistic expertise, and solidifying the
web.

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 The Web of Artistic Practice

References
Abuhamdeh, Sami, and Mihaly Gibson, James J. 1966. The Senses Considered
Csikszentmihalyi. 2004. “The Artistic as Perceptual Systems. Boston: Houghton
Personality: A Systems Perspective.” In Mifflin.
Creativity: From Potential to Realization, ———. (1979) 1986. The Ecological Approach
edited by Robert J. Sternberg, Elena to Visual Perception. London: Lawrence
L. Grigorenoko, and Jerome L. Singer, Erlbaum.
31–42. Washington DC: American Grene, Marjorie. (1966) 1974. The Knower
Psychological Association. and the Known. Berkeley: University of
Arendt, Hannah. 1978. The Life of the Mind. California Press.
Edited by Mary McCarthy. New York: Hall, Edward T. 1966. The Hidden Dimension.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. New York: Anchor Books.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1980. Le sens pratique. Paris: Kristeva, Julia. 1998. “The Subject in
Éditions de Minuit. Translated by Richard Process.” In The Tel Quel Reader, edited
Nice as The Logic of Practice (Stanford, CA: by Patrick ffrench and Roland-François
Stanford University Press, 1990). Lack, 133–78. London: Routledge.
Clark, Andy. 1997. Being There: Putting Brain, Lotman, Yuri M. 1990. Universe of the Mind:
Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Translated
MA: MIT Press. by Ann Shukman. Bloomington: Indiana
Coessens, Kathleen. 2011. “An Artistic Logic University Press.
of Practice: The Case of the Performer.” Ludwig, Arnold M. 1992. “Culture
The International Journal of the Arts in and Creativity.” American Journal of
Society 6 (4): 1–11. Psychotherapy 46 (3), 454–69.
Crane, Diana. 1992. “High Culture Polanyi, Michael. 1958. Personal Knowledge:
versus Popular Culture Revisited: A Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. London:
Reconceptualization of Recorded Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Cultures.” In Cultivating Differences: Popper, Karl R. 1972. Objective Knowledge: An
Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Evolutionary Approach. Oxford: Oxford
Inequality, edited by Michèle Lamont University Press / Clarendon Press.
and Marcel Fournier, 57–73. Chicago: Quine, William Van Orman, and J. S. Ullian.
University of Chicago Press. 1970. The Web of Belief. New York: Random
Crowther, Paul. 1993. Art and Embodiment: House.
From Aesthetics to Self-Consciousness. Tatsuno, Sheridan. 1990. Created in Japan:
Oxford: Oxford University Press / From Imitators to World-Class Innovators.
Clarendon Press. New York: Harper & Row.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. 1990. Flow: The Triantafyllou, Michael S., and George
Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: S. Triantafyllou. 1995. “An Efficient
Harper & Row. Swimming Machine.” Scientific American
Geertz, Clifford. 1975. “On the Nature 272 (3): 64–71.
of Anthropological Understanding.”
American Scientist 63 (1): 47–53.

81
 Towards an Ethical-Political
Role for Artistic Research
Marcel Cobussen
University of Leiden

[1] Can the subaltern speak? In 1988, the Indian philosopher Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak asked this question in an homonymic essay in which she investigated
the relations between Western poststructuralist criticisms of the metaphysi-
cal subject and the representation of non-Western people (Spivak [1988] 2008,
109–30). According to Spivak one of the occurring problems was that contem-
porary Western intellectuals tried to speak on behalf of the suppressed, thereby
unwittingly and imperceptibly reinscribing, co-opting, and rehearsing neoco-
lonial imperatives of political domination, economic exploitation, and cultural
erasure.
How then can the subaltern—or “the other”—speak? How can she or he be
understood without or outside the discursive frameworks, conceptual conven-
tions, and discourses that we have at our disposal? How can we recognise the
heterogeneity or otherness of the other? Spivak points out two fundamental
problems: first, a certain dependence upon Western intellectuals who “speak
for” the subaltern rather than allowing her or him to speak for her- or himself;
and second, the assumption of a subaltern collectivity rather than an account-
ing for their heterogeneity and individuality. Spivak warns against recognition
by assimilation: a “true subaltern” is identified by her or his difference.

[2] Spivak’s humbling and thought-provoking text came to my mind when I

started thinking about the relation between artistic research and ethics. That
artistic research contributes to the development of knowledge, to the disclo-
sure of new knowledge, and to a critical reflection on already existing knowl-
edge, is, by now, more and more acknowledged and accepted. However, the
question of whether an ethical or ethical-political role can be granted to artistic
research opens another discussion, perhaps an even more challenging one. To
meditate on this role implies not only investigating the connections between
artistic research and art or between artistic research and the production, distri-
bution, and reception of knowledge, but also considering the potential position
and function of artistic research within broader social spheres. Like art, artistic
research not only represents and responds to social developments and ethi-
cal-political ideas; through artistic research these developments and ideas come
into existence, are articulated and questioned, and receive their concrete forms.

83
 Marcel Cobussen

[3] Can the subaltern speak? Can she or he speak in artistic research? Can she or
he speak through artistic research? And can she or he speak as artistic research?
These three questions will guide this short essay. My aim is not to provide con-
clusive answers but to chalk out the contours within which a discussion about
artistic research and ethics could possibly take place. Three modest and rudi-
mentary anchorages should serve as points of initiation forging a discussion on
an aspect of artistic research that, thus far, has hardly been thematised.
It is beyond the scope of this essay to enter at length into the question of
what might be considered artistic research; I have dealt with that topic else-
where (see Cobussen 2013, 2011, 2009, 2007). The same goes, mutatis mutandis,
for ethics (see Cobussen 2005, 2003, 2002; Cobussen and Finn 2002; Cobussen
and Nielsen 2012). However, I will briefly and simply explain why I commenced
with the Spivak essay.
Of course, the question whether the subaltern can and is allowed to speak is
a thoroughly ethical question. Is the other as other, the other who is customarily
speechless and neglected, allowed a voice that is not predetermined by already
existing discourses and paradigms built around well-known concepts? In other
words, is there some hospitality for the subaltern, for the other in its otherness?
For, as Jacques Derrida states in On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, “ethics is
hospitality” (Derrida 2001, 16). It is with these thoughts in mind that I address
the relation between artistic research and an unconditional hospitality towards
the subaltern, towards another otherness.

[4] First anchorage: can the subaltern speak in artistic research, in artistic
experimentation, in the artistic results of such research? The Six Tones is a
musical (research) project by two Swedes, Henrik Frisk (real-time electron-
ics) and Stefan Östersjö (guitars and banjo), and two Vietnamese, Ngo Tra My
(d̄àn bầu, a traditional monochord instrument) and Nguyen Thanh Thuy (d̄àn
tranh, a cither). As Östersjö claims in his PhD dissertation Shut Up ’n’ Play!, one
of the aims of this project, initiated by the Swedes, is to defer a collage-like
superposition of two culturally distinct musics and attempt unprejudiced and
free “collocation” instead of a music-political “assimilation” or “integration”
(Östersjö 2008, 292).1
The sonic results as well as Östersjö’s documentation provide us with inter-
esting material regarding the circumspection with which the two Western (and
male!) musicians approach the two Asian women, who were mainly educated in
performing traditional Vietnamese music. Being aware of the pitfall of impos-
ing—of reinscribing—any sort of cultural domination, the Swedes seem tenta-
tive during the first rehearsals, socially as well as musically. They are questioning
their own position from the very beginning of the collaboration and are seek-
ing to adapt to the input of the Vietnamese. Östersjö, for example, adjusts the
tuning of his guitar in response to the characteristics of Nguyen playing the d̄àn

1 The initial intention of the project was to provide material for a piece by Henrik Frisk. Points of depar-
ture were some loose sketches in combination with the musical, cultural, and social backgrounds of the
musicians. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJqzyDzXV5g.

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 Towards an Ethical-Political Role for Artistic Research

tranh. In accordance with the Vietnamese musical tradition, notation becomes

nothing more than a framework within which the musicians have a certain
freedom to shape their performance instead of the far more prescriptive use
of scores in Western art music. And by frequently using traditional Vietnamese
songs as a source of inspiration, the Swedes enter the role of apprentices, the
Vietnamese that of the masters (Östersjö 2008, 187–91, 292–97).
At first sight it thus seems that the subaltern—in this case Vietnamese music,
instruments, and women2—was clearly given a voice. By reversing the con-
ventional, historical, and sometimes still proclaimed hierarchy in which the
Western world regards itself superior to the East, the Six Tones avoids all kinds
of neocolonial imperatives.
However, the project and interactions are more complex than this: hierar-
chies are not only subverted but also unmasked as superseded prejudices. Two
brief examples should illustrate this claim. First, Frisk is presented as the com-
poser of most pieces and, although traditional Vietnamese music doesn’t know
the concept of the composer, Nguyen and Ngo try to adapt to that authority.
That is, they are trying, from the position of an outsider, to understand and
respect concepts from another culture. However, Frisk neither plays nor
accepts the traditional role of the Western composer as the one who describes
and prescribes what and how to perform. Shifting from composer to performer
and back again, Frisk represents a general move in Western art music towards
more interactive ways of producing musical works. He thus emasculates these
ideas assumed by Nguyen and Ngo, not by reversing the hierarchy but by
deconstructing it.
Second, the considerable role of electronics gives the music a clear contem-
porary Western flavour. What seemed to be a tribute to traditional music from
an exotic culture becomes a far more complex interaction between “Western”
and “Eastern” influences, perhaps inclining towards the dominance of a
Western musical language. However, is this a turn to re-establishing the old
hierarchy? This is how Nguyen sees it: “I know normally people like to hear
something Vietnamese from us. Sometimes I think I could do something that
is not Vietnamese and still make people like it” (Nguyen in Östersjö 2008, 191).
Nguyen seems to challenge the Eurocentric view that artists coming from other
cultures are first of all “typical” or “representative” of their culture. In other
words, Nguyen implicitly confirms Spivak’s proposal that the subaltern should
be considered heterogeneously instead of as a collective.
What appears as an artistic research project on potential and actual collabo-
rations between composers and performers turns out to be full of ethical issues
and questions about concrete moral behaviour in and through music. Through
the Six Tones, four Northern European and South-East Asian musicians con-
front themselves—perhaps inadvertently and in an unplanned way but nev-

2 Perhaps one could say that Spivak’s notion of the subaltern does not apply (anymore) to Vietnamese
music, instruments, and women: their position has been emancipated over the past decades. However,
by being so aware of potential Western dominance and trying to avoid it, the Swedes made the idea of
otherness and subalterity manifest.

85
 Marcel Cobussen

ertheless inevitably and with full dedication—with several cultural prejudices

and generalisations. The project appears to be a platform for mutual learning, a
meeting point where these prejudices and generalisations must be challenged
in order for the musicians to be able to make music together. On a local, singu-
lar, small-scale, non-discursive level where all that matters is exactly difference
(or perhaps it is better to speak of différance here), a subaltern gets a voice, a
musical voice.

[5] Second anchorage: can the ethical speak through artistic research? Can we
encounter ethical and moral issues through specific forms of artistic experi-
mentation? Again, I am not searching for new generalisations, alternative grand
narratives, or substitutional moral paradigms. Instead, I focus on small and
local artistic interventions that question and disrupt accepted and well-known
social behaviour, thereby offering a mirror through which we can encounter
our own ethical or moral presuppositions and prejudices.
Brian Rush is a North American artist who in 2010 started a series of pro-
jects joined under the name Relational Prosthetics. The projects consist of partic-
ipatory objects leading to face-to-face interactions that can be humorous and
hilarious but also, and simultaneously, engender uncomfortable and confron-
tational feelings. Bench, a project from 2011, is a construction of steel and alu-
minium in a public space of which the seat, sloping downward from the sides
towards the middle, consists of rotatable cylinders. The effect is easy to predict:
two people, preferably not knowing one another, and therefore following the
social convention of seating themselves at either end of the bench, will soon
end up in the middle, unavoidably engaging in physical contact. Judging from
the photos shown on Rush’s homepage (www.brian-rush.com) most people are
definitely able to see the joke; they laugh and seem to enjoy the new situation.
However, it is certainly not unimaginable that some people will start laughing
uncomfortably. Almost ending up in the lap of a complete stranger might very
well arouse embarrassment and discomfort, and this is exactly what interests
Rush.
Bench plays with and questions automatic social habits in public spaces, tem-
porarily hacking them. Physical contact or rapidly entering into close proximity
with a stranger is a taboo in the West, where too much eye contact can lead to
aggressive comments. How do we cope with that? What socio-moral reactions
can we observe when we are thrown into unexpected situations? Those are
questions that can arise when one experiences Rush’s work.
Helmets, also from 2011, consists of a suspended rail on which two helmets
are connected, facing each other. Attached to the helmet is a handle by which
the headgear can be moved back and forth along the rail. Whereas in Bench
people are condemned to physical contact once they seat themselves, Helmets
offers its participants the opportunity to choose how close they would like to
get to the other. This can lead to a fascinating play of interactions, considera-
tions, provocations, and refusals. Imagine two strangers, one of whom takes the
initiative to approach the other. Possible reactions of the other might include
responding in kind by moving the helmet in the first person’s direction, refus-

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 Towards an Ethical-Political Role for Artistic Research

ing the advances by going back, or maintaining the same position and waiting
to see what will happen next. Of course, the reaction of this second person will
be influenced not only by the movement of the first person per se but also by
his or her interpretation of the bodily and facial expressions that accompany
this movement: laughter, timidity, aggression, overt advance, etc. In turn, the
first person will attune her or his behaviour, more or less, depending on the
reactions of the second person.
Is art articulating the ethical here? Are these investigations into human social
behaviour in specific, possibly uncomfortable situations—investigations tak-
ing place in and through art works—confronting us with moral regulations and
opinions? It is clear that Rush is not offering the participating visitors of his
relational prosthetics a clear set of rules, prescribing how to behave; it is up to
each participant, in each particular situation, influenced (or not) by another
participant, to make decisions regarding how to (re)act. The ethics at work
in Rush’s interactive installations is not one of preconceived and clearly for-
mulated ideas about correct behaviour, about doing the (universal and prede-
fined) good, about concrete moral prerogatives. Instead, works such as Bench
and Helmets simply investigate what will happen when a human being affects
and is being affected. This is an ethics of engagement and an ethics of differ-
ence, an invitation to encounter the unexpected, the confusing, a (sub)alterity
within our society, instead of the premeditated. This ethics is based on active
participation and responsible sensitivity (with)in/through a full-body engage-
ment. It is a move away from understanding or theorising ethics towards an
ethics that is realised in the moment of doing the art work. Through Rush’s
artistic research, collective and individual social and ethical behaviour can be
investigated, observed, and tested; his Relational Prosthetics function as a kind of
social laboratory.

[6] Third anchorage: can the ethical speak as artistic research? Can there be
something ethical in artistic research as artistic research? Or, again, could artis-
tic research in itself and as itself be regarded as a subaltern, as a possible mani-
festation or a virtual voice of the other?
Roughly following Christopher Frayling’s well-known categorisation
(Frayling 1993), Henk Borgdorff distinguishes in his book The Conflict of the
Faculties between research on, for, and in the arts. Focusing on the first and last
only, their main difference lies in the relation between subject and object. With
research on the arts, most often reflective and interpretative, the object remains
untouched by the inquiring gaze of the researcher. In other words, there is a
theoretical distance between researcher and art work or event. Conversely,
research in the arts does not observe this distance: the artistic practice itself is
an essential component of both the research process and the research results.
Concepts and theories are interwoven with art practices (Borgdorff 2012,
37–39). Because it is the artist who is simultaneously the researcher, her artistic
production will undergo changes; being the alpha and omega of her research
project, her art cannot remain untouched, unaffected, uninvolved.

87
 Marcel Cobussen

Because today much (artistic) research takes place in the space between these
two poles, I prefer to consider them as paradigmatic constructs or ideal/typical
oppositions. This being assumed, is the proposition legitimate and worthy—
and I want to emphasise my circumspection here—to investigate whether there
is a possible connection between research in the arts and the subaltern condi-
tion? Is there some truth in the claim that musicology, art history, theatre stud-
ies, media studies, or comparative literature attempt to “speak for” the arts and
artists rather than allowing them to speak for themselves? Is it too far-fetched
to scrutinise to what extent these academically approved disciplines make use
of methods that only allow the arts and artists to respond within the frames
and constraints of those very same methods? Is it possible—and perhaps even
necessary—to re-evaluate to what extent these discourses often re-disseminate
generalisations, simply because they make use of discursive language whereas
art emphasises the particular, the singular, the unique?
This is not to suggest that with the rise of artistic research all potential prob-
lems underlying these questions will be solved soon. Rather, the rise, develop-
ment, and rationale of artistic research makes posing these questions, ethical
questions to some extent, possible, urgent, and relevant.
At present artistic research takes place in the margins of art production as
well as in the periphery of scholarly and academic work. As such it presents a
topos, a utopia or perhaps an atopos, which is somehow commensurable with
Spivak’s subaltern. To a certain extent, differing from one project to another,
artistic research withdraws from the accepted researches on the arts. By speak-
ing about art in and through art, different voices can be heard, different per-
spectives open up, different movements take place, different spaces are con-
structed, different plays are performed, different knowledge is presented,
different language is necessary, different strategies are developed.
Furthermore, artistic researchers (can) seldom speak in general terms;
through the very nature of the process, they position their own artistic work
in the centre of their research, thereby almost automatically reinforcing het-
erogeneity and individuality. If there is some truth in this argument, it might
become clear that the subaltern can also be located in the heart of Western
culture and not only in those areas which were for too long considered as geo-
graphical peripheries.

References
Borgdorff, Henk. 2012. The Conflict of the 2013. http://www.ephemerajournal.org/
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Press. Parker and Alain Badiou.” Culture, Theory
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around a Future of Musicology, Seven ———. 2007. “The Trojan Horse:
Times around Music and Ethics.” Dutch Epistemological Explorations concerning
Journal of Music Theory 7 (3): 159–64. Practice Based Research.” Dutch Journal of
———. 2003. “Ethics and/in/as Silence.” Music Theory 12 (1): 18–33.
Ephemera 3 (4): 277–85. Accessed 21 June

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 Towards an Ethical-Political Role for Artistic Research

———. 2009. “The Intruder: On Ashgate.

Differentiations in Artistic Research.” Derrida, Jacques. 2001. On Cosmopolitanism
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89
 A New Path to Music:
Experimental Exploration and
Expression of an Aesthetic Universe

Bart Vanhecke
Leuven University and Orpheus Research Centre in Music

i ntr o duc ti o n
The term “experimentation in music”—or in the arts in general—is commonly
used in at least three different senses: it usually refers (1) to innovativeness
in artistic creation, (2) to unpredictability or indeterminacy in procedures or
outcomes,1 or (3) to experimentation in the scientific sense.2 In this article, I
wish to suggest a different categorisation of artistic experimentation on the
basis of developmental exploration of the idiosyncratic part of an artist’s aes-
thetic universe. To do this, I will first discuss the concepts of aesthetic universe
and culture, and I will relate these concepts to artistic practice and research
as expression and exploration of the artist’s aesthetic universe. Three types of
experimentation related to the arts will then be discussed: experimentation
for art, experimentation through art, and experimentation in art. All three types
may be called experimental in the common sense of the term, since their pro-
cedures generally contain elements of innovativeness (although not necessarily
in artistic creation), unpredictability, and scientific testing.
The theoretical and conceptual discussion will be followed by a brief descrip-
tion of two of the projects I am currently working on—Elements of an Aesthetic
Universe and A l’image du monde—both of which explore and express my aes-
thetic universe and demonstrate how the concepts discussed apply to my
research and creative practice as a composer. I will show which aspects of my
research and practice contain elements of the three types of experimentation
introduced in the first part of the article.

1 John Cage (1958, 39) defined an experimental action as “one the outcome of which is not foreseen.” I do
not consider unpredictability a defining aspect of experimentation, but a consequence of experimental
procedures. Below, in the section “Ephemerality and relativity of artistic experimentation,” I claim that
indeterminacy is no longer an experimental aspect of art.
2 In his Darmstadt Lecture of 1990, James Tenney stated his idea of scientific artistic experimentation:
composition as research that tests a hypothesis as a general principle. See Bob Gilmore’s “Five Maps of
the Experimental World,” in this volume.

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 Bart Vanhecke

a r ti s ts a nd t h eir aesth etic u n iverse

An individual’s “knowledge”3 is the individual’s web of memory. It consists of

synaptically interconnected neurons in the neocortex4 of the brain, all “traces”
that are left in the brain by cerebral activity. Learning is the establishment and
strengthening of synaptic interconnections among neurons (See Gazzaniga,
Ivry, and Mangun 2008, 356–57). It is the process of acquiring new knowledge
or the strengthening of existing knowledge. Thinking or thought is the process
of neuronal firing happening within the cerebral web of knowledge. Thoughts
are the object of thinking.
An individual’s personal knowledge can be grouped in different but usu-
ally overlapping subsets of knowledge according to the different domains of
thought that require and activate that specific knowledge. Whenever such a
subset of personal knowledge is highly developed and structured, and occu-
pies a prominent place in a person’s activities, I will call the subset a “cerebral
universe.”
The “aesthetic universe” of an artist (or an informed non-artist with highly
developed aesthetic interests) is the cerebral universe consisting of all the art-
ist’s aesthetic knowledge. A musician’s aesthetic universe, for instance,5 con-
tains not only all the musician’s theoretical and historical knowledge of music,
and knowledge of the repertoire, but also the procedural knowledge necessary
to play an instrument, read a score, or compose a new piece, and the emotional
traces left in the musician’s brain by aesthetical experiences.
A musician’s artistic practice—creation or performance—is the expression of
the complete meaning of aesthetic concepts6—aesthetic ideas—within his or
her aesthetic universe. The “meaning” of an aesthetic idea for an artist is the
web of all concepts that are connected7 to the aesthetic idea within the artist’s
aesthetic universe. Those concepts don’t have to be aesthetic concepts them-
selves. They can belong to all types of knowledge and are usually intuitive and
emotional non-verbal concepts. Indeed, it is often because some ideas cannot
be expressed verbally that artists resort to art to express them. An “artist” can
thus be defined as a person who is able to—feels the urge and has the skills

3 The concept “knowledge” is here used exclusively in the sense of “knowledge possessed by some know-
ing subject. . . . which should better be called organismic knowledge, since it consists of the disposition
of organisms” (Popper 1979, 73). All information that is not cerebral (e.g., the content of books) is left
out of this definition. Whenever reference is made to the latter kind of knowledge, it could be called
“material knowledge” (more precise would be to call it “other” material knowledge, since all knowl-
edge—including subjective knowledge—is material). Popper (ibid.) contrasts subjective knowledge
with objective knowledge: “the logical content of our theories, conjectures, guesses.”
4 “Most researchers argue that the content of a memory . . . is stored in the neocortex” (Ward 2010, 193).
5 Although most of what will be said about the aesthetic universe, artistic practice, research, and exper-
imentation applies to all artistic media, in this article, the emphasis will be on music, and on musical
composition more than on performance.
6 A concept is here defined as the quantum of thought, regardless of whether this is the firing of a single
neuron or a combination of firing neurons. An aesthetic concept is the concept for the meaning of
which the artwork is the sign.
7 Concepts are said to be connected when it is possible to activate a single thought process that contains
both of them.

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(the procedural knowledge) to8—express the meaning of the aesthetic ideas

belonging to his or her aesthetic universe through the creation and/or perfor-
mance of artworks. An “artwork,” then, is the sign vehicle—the external out-
come of the process of encoding—of an aesthetic concept resulting from the
expression of the whole meaning of that aesthetic concept.
Artistic expression differs from other forms of communication because the
complete meaning of the aesthetic idea, of which the artwork is the sign, is rel-
evant. In formal communication the relevant meaning of the concepts used is
normally restricted; in some cases only the definition of the communicated
concepts is relevant. In colloquial communication, connotations, nuance,
ambivalence, humour, irony or sarcasm, “reading between the lines,” sophistry,
or demagoguery may play a more or less important role in the extension of the
relevant meaning of the concepts expressed. At the opposite end of formal
communication stands artistic expression, in which the whole web of meaning
is relevantly expressed without limits to the possible connections between the
concepts the web of meaning contains.
The complete meaning of a musical aesthetic idea is encoded in a score or
performance and decoded by the performer who performs the score or the lis-
tener who listens to the performance, and this decoding ideally results in the
active creation of new aesthetic ideas with their own meaning in the brain (in
the aesthetic universe) of performers and listeners.

c ultur e a nd i ts bo r der s

Most artists share common aesthetic knowledge or ideas with other people
(artists and non-artists alike). This common knowledge is what I call a “cul-
ture.” People sharing a common set of aesthetic knowledge are said to belong
to the same (aesthetic) culture.9 Although the meaning of an aesthetic idea
behind a score or performance differs from individual to individual, people
belonging to the same culture will usually create and develop similar meanings
for a particular score or performance as long as the aesthetic idea of the piece
or performance can be situated within that shared culture. When we perform
scores or hear performances that are considered conventional within our cul-
ture, we have no problem in attaching meaning to the score or performance
that is likely similar to the composer’s or performer’s expressed meaning. This
is generally the case when Westerners perform or hear tonal music belonging
to the common practice of their culture. Such pieces stay within “a tonal uni-
verse where [the score or performance] is accessible to us in all its warmth and
charm,” to quote Leonard Bernstein (1976, 307, my italics). Similarity of mean-
ing is the only thing we can strive for if we want to understand the intentions of
a composer or performer.

8 Arnold Schoenberg claimed “art is born of ‘I must’ [I feel the urge], not of ‘I can’ [I possess the skills]”
(Schoenberg [1975] 1984, 365). It seems improbable to me, however, that urge without artistic skills
could lead to the creation of an artwork.
9 More precise would be to say that a common culture belongs to the aesthetic universes of those people.

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 Bart Vanhecke

Not all artists stay within Bernstein’s “warm and charming” safe boundaries
of existing and established culture, however. Some artists—the “true artists”
according to Arnold Schoenberg—consciously or (more often) unconsciously
operate at the borders of the prevailing culture, or radically venture into
regions of their aesthetic universe far removed from the culture they belong
to, the regions that I call the “idiosyncratic part of the aesthetic universe.” As
Arnold Schoenberg ([1978] 1983, 400) stated:

The young artist does not know himself; he does not yet sense wherein he is
different from the others, different above all from the literature. He still adheres
generally to the precepts of his education and is not able to break through it
everywhere in favour of his own inclinations. He does not [consciously] break
through; where there is breakthrough, he does not know it. He believes that his work
is at no point distinguishable from what is generally found to be good in art; and
all of a sudden he is violently awakened from his dream, when the harsh reality of
criticism makes him aware that somehow he is not really so normal after all, as a true
artist should never be normal: he lacks perfect agreement with those average people
who were educable, who could commit wholly to the Kultur.

By leaving the familiar territory of prevailing musical aesthetics, musicians ven-

ture on a quest down the untrodden “path to new music” (der Weg zur neuen
Musik), as Anton Webern called it. “New music,” Webern (1960, 12) said, “is
the one that has never been said”10 (my translation); in other words, it is music
that expresses aesthetic ideas belonging to the idiosyncratic regions of an art-
ist’s aesthetic universe. “True artists,” in the Schoenbergian sense, composers
as well as performers, operate to an important extent in these idiosyncratic
regions. Expressing ideas belonging to this territory opens up completely new
worlds of ideas in artistic communication. According to Pierre Boulez (1966,
19), Webern was “essentially out to conquer a new world”11 (my translation).
New worlds of this kind often abide by laws that are different from the pre-
vailing aesthetic laws, and, once accepted, the ideas contribute to the develop-
ment of culture, or even sometimes cause complete aesthetic revolutions, as
will be discussed below.

a r ti s ti c r es e arc h an d artistic experi Men tatio n

It is not only possible for artists to express the meaning of ideas belonging to
their aesthetic universe, but also to explore that aesthetic universe. The con-
scious and deliberate exploration of an artist’s aesthetic universe is how I define
“artistic research.” It is obvious that, since artists are the only ones who have
unmediated, direct access to their own aesthetic universe, artistic research can
only be performed by those artists themselves. This research can happen within
the cultural boundaries of an artist’s aesthetic universe as well as across cultural
borders and in the “idiosyncratic part”; its aim is the gain of new knowledge

10 “Neue Musik ist jene, die nie gesagt wurde.”

11 “essentiellement à la conquête d’un monde nouveau.”

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about the aesthetic universe. When the new knowledge thus generated is situ-
ated entirely within an existing culture, it enlarges cultural knowledge or may
lead to changes in existing knowledge. However, artistic research often happens
in the idiosyncratic regions of the artist’s aesthetic universe, or it can require or
cause the extension of an aesthetic universe. It is in the latter two cases that the
artist-as-researcher leaves the safety of familiar territory behind and ventures
down the new and potentially perilous12 untrodden paths of musical aesthetics
that were mentioned above.
When artistic research and artistic practice take place in the idiosyncratic
regions of the artist’s aesthetic universe, or at the boundaries of a culture, or
when they require new exploratory strategies or new expressive procedures,
they become experimental. I distinguish between three types of experimen-
tation related to artistic practice: experimentation for art, experimentation
through art, and experimentation in art.
Although “experimentation for art” (or for the arts) is related to the arts, it is
strictly speaking not artistic but scientific experimentation.13 It uses scientific
methods that start from the formulation of a problem, develop a hypothesis
about (a) possible solution(s) for the problem, and end with the verification
of the hypothesis through testing. In this repeatable procedure of verification,
an element in a known situation is changed in order to find out what the effect
of the change on the known situation is, to test or falsify the hypothesis. When
this scientific procedure of experimentation is used for aesthetic purposes, I
call it experimentation for art. This can happen within the realms of any science
that can be related to art—not only aesthetics, but also, for example, musicol-
ogy, psychology, sociology, or physics. Since this type of experimentation is not
artistic experimentation, I will not discuss it here, instead concentrating on
experimentation through art and experimentation in art.
“Experimentation through art” (or through the arts) is experimentation
through artistic practice in the procedure of artistic expression. It involves the
creation of new forms14 of artistic expression, novel ways of expressing aesthetic
ideas, and occurs through the expression of the idiosyncratic knowledge of
the artist’s aesthetic universe. This definition of artistic experimentation cor-
responds closely to those definitions15 that state that all artistic practice that
is situated outside tradition, outside an existing culture, involving the intro-
duction of novel, innovative elements into art—not only John Cage’s pre-

12 Perilous and experimental have a common Latin root (perire), referring to the risk of perishing.
13 It is not artistic experimentation because it is not an artistic procedure. Music can also function as a
tool in non-musical scientific experimentation. Such is for instance the case in experiments conducted
to assess the influence of music on plants (e.g., by Dorothy Retallack [1973]). This is of course not exper-
imentation for the arts, and the music that is used as an experimental tool is not necessarily experimen-
tal itself.
14 Every new composition or performance is a new expression of the meaning of an aesthetic idea, but not
necessarily a novel (a new form of) expression.
15 David Nicholls (1998, 518), for instance, defines experimental music as music that lies outside of
tradition. In contrast, Nicholls claims, avant-garde music is music that occupies an extreme position
within the tradition. Translated to the idea of aesthetic universe, avant-garde music is the expression
of aesthetic ideas near the borders of culture, whereas experimental music expresses ideas within the
idiosyncratic regions of the artist’s aesthetic universe.

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pared piano or Harry Partch’s new instruments and alternative scales, but also
Igor Stravinsky’s introduction of rhythm as a structural element in The Rite of
Spring—is experimental. According to these definitions, music is experimen-
tal when it expresses the meaning of aesthetic ideas that are situated in the
idiosyncratic part of the artist’s aesthetic universe. The outcome of musical
experimentation through art is “experimental music,” that is, innovative music
expressing idiosyncratic aesthetic ideas in novel ways. It results in the creation
of new procedural knowledge (new compositional or performance procedures)
or in the development of new musical resources.16
The second genuine type of artistic experimentation, “experimentation in
art” (or in the arts), belongs not to artistic expression but to artistic explora-
tion—to artistic research. It happens inside an aesthetic universe: hence, exper-
imentation in art. It involves the development of new kinds of knowledge or new
types of exploration.17 It is experimentation in research on the artist’s aesthetic
universe by the artist, a way for artists to understand and develop or expand
their aesthetic universe. Experimentation in art consists of thought experiments18
that yield new kinds of knowledge about the content of the idiosyncratic part
of the artist’s aesthetic universe. It involves the discovery and development of
new laws governing it, and the assessment of the relation between the idiosyn-
cratic part of the aesthetic universe and culture, as well as between the artist’s
aesthetic universe as a whole and the external world (including other aesthetic
universes19). As with experimental music as the outcome of experimentation
through art, the outcomes of the thought experiments of experimentation in
art are “experimental ideas” and “experimental tools” (methods, procedures or
techniques that can be implemented in experimentation through art).
In the thought experiments of artistic research, when existing concepts or
strategies prove to be inadequate, the invention or development of new con-
cepts, new strategies, or new expressive procedures may be required to under-
stand the explored regions of the aesthetic universe (formulation of a prob-
lem). This is part of the procedure of experimentation in art, a procedure that
also includes the development of these concepts, strategies, and procedures
(hypothesis for a solution to the problem), and the verification of their valid-
ity in relation to the ideas of the explored regions of the aesthetic universe,
to already existing knowledge (verification), and to their future applications.

16 In this context, Henry Cowell’s book on new musical resources is not an example of experimentation
through art, but a source for possible experimentation through artistic practice. The purpose of his
book is to point out how “by various means of applying [the] principles [of the overtone series] in many
different manners, a large palette of musical materials can be assembled” (Cowell [1930] 1966, x–xi).
17 Using the metaphor of “Bill’s bike” (see William Brooks [2012]): experimentation in art consists of the
exploration of new roads, or the creation of new modes of—new vehicles for—exploration (a horse
instead of a bike, for instance, if a bike is the familiar means of transportation).
18 A “thought experiment” is an experiment that happens within a cerebral universe, as opposed to
experimentation performed in the physical world. Galileo Galilei’s experiment from the Leaning Tower
of Pisa to demonstrate the independence of mass to the rate of acceleration of falling bodies (see Drake
1978, 19–20) is an example of experimentation in the physical world, as is all experimentation through
art (artistic practice happens in the physical world). Albert Einstein’s development of the theory of
relativity, on the other hand, may be regarded as an example of thought experiment.
19 What is an internal cerebral universe for one individual is a part of the external world for all others.

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This procedure is akin to the scientific procedure (problem–hypothesis–veri-

fication) discussed above, but while scientific procedure assesses elements of
the physical universe, experimentation in art happens within the aesthetic uni-
verse. The aesthetic laws thus discovered or developed may be different from
physical laws, as is discussed below in the section on the A l’image du monde
project.
The trajectory toward the development of the dodecaphonic technique by
Arnold Schoenberg during the 1920s may be seen as an example of the result
of experimentation in art. “Beginning with his works of 1909, Schoenberg was
in territory new not only to him but also to music itself ” (Shawn [2002] 2003,
92–93). During the second decade of the twentieth century, Schoenberg was
struck so radically by the inability of existing techniques and compositional
strategies to handle the evolution of the tonal idiom that for almost a decade
he felt forced to mentally experiment. This eventually led to the development
of dodecaphony, a technique that not only withstood the test of implementa-
tion in compositional practice, but also shed new light on the preceding tonal
idiom and the evolution it underwent. The evolution of Schoenberg’s approach
to the tonal idiom led to the need, rooted in “the unconscious urge to try out
. . . new resources independently,” to establish new conceptions of tonality
(Schoenberg, [1975] 1984, 207); further, it led to the idea of “emancipation of
the dissonance” (ibid., 216), to the introduction of the concept of “pantonality”
(the inclusion of all keys rather than the absence of key), and eventually to his
“Method of Composing with Twelve Tones Which are Related Only with One
Another” (ibid., 218).
When we compare experimentation through art with experimentation in
art, and apply this to a composer’s activity,20 the relationship—and the differ-
ences—between these two main ways to embark on new and untrodden paths
of musical aesthetics becomes clear. As a composer one can experiment either
by composing novel sounds or sound combinations (experimentation through
art), or by trying to develop novel aesthetic ideas or new paradigms (experi-
mentation in art) and implement them in the composition of new pieces. In
the former approach, the experimental phase occurs in the composition pro-
cess; in the latter, experimentation occurs during the phase of aesthetic devel-
opment. The former approach results in new kinds of artistic works, in new
aesthetic narratives, and in experimental music, whereas the latter results in
the development of new aesthetic ideas and new aesthetic laws. The former
approach represents bottom-up experimentation, which starts from artistic prac-
tice and ends in the creation of new aesthetic ideas, whereas the latter is top-
down experimentation, which starts from fundamental research, the development
of new ideas, and ends with those ideas implemented or tested in the practice
of composition. The former is what Marion Saxer (2007, 55–56) describes as

20 Mutatis mutandis, similar findings can be elaborated for the activities of performers. The notion of
experimentation in art could also be extended to listeners, but that would excessively broaden the scope
of the present chapter.

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“novel compositional methods or procedures as experiment,”21 the latter what

she calls “musical reorientation”22 (my translations). The former represents
Webern’s “path to new music,” the latter is the exploration of a “new path to
music,” which may sometimes be only a “small step” on the new path to music,
but nonetheless may sometimes be—as in Schoenberg’s case23—a “giant leap.”

e ph eM er a li ty an d relativity oF artistic experi Men tatio n

Experimentation in art and experimentation through art happen beyond the

borders of the artist’s cultural knowledge, and generally beyond the borders
of a culture. The knowledge—ideas, laws or paradigms—and artworks they
produce are at the outset not part of some culture, but in the end experimen-
tal exploration of new territory in the aesthetic universe and its artistic out-
comes may be accepted and adopted by a culture. Artistic experimentation is
therefore a procedure that is ephemeral, transitory in nature. Once the new
procedures or paradigms have become part of a culture, the exploration or
expression cease to be experimental. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the develop-
ment of dodecaphony, Cage’s prepared piano, and the idea of indeterminacy
as an expressive tool, or Partch’s new instruments and alternative tunings, have
become part of the culture of at least a limited group of people. Therefore they
were, but no longer are experimental. This is why I don’t call indeterminacy (in
aleatoric music, for instance) an instance of experimentation.24 The principle
was initially experimental when it was introduced by Charles Ives and further
exploited by composers such as Henry Cowell or John Cage, but it has now
become established as a means of expression.
Unlike in scientific experimentation, where it is a necessary condition,
repeatability is not a characteristic of artistic experimentation. Once a proce-
dure of experimental exploration or expression has been culturally accepted, it
can no longer be repeated as an experiment, at least not within the culture that
embraced it, or by the artist who conducted the experiment. The experimen-
tal status of an artistic procedure is culturally relative and subject dependent.
What is experimental for one culture (because the procedure and its outcomes
have not been adopted by the culture) may be familiar territory for another
culture. What is an experiment for one artist (within one aesthetic universe)
may not be experimental for another. Artistic experimentation is therefore cul-
turally or individually (subjectively) unrepeatable.

21 “neuartige kompositorische Verfahrensweisen als Experimente.”

22 “musikästhetischen Neuorientierung.”
23 The invention of the dodecaphonic technique (or method, as Schoenberg preferred to call it) is
arguably one of the three great revolutions in musical aesthetics, together with the Ars Nova and the
introduction of harmonic thinking around the beginning of the seventeenth century.
24 See footnote 1.

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e lem en t S of a n a e S theti c u n iV erSe , a d o c to ral researc h

pr oJec t

My doctoral research concentrates on the systematisation of atonality and

dissonance in amotivic serial music composition. It involves the further elab-
oration of a serial composition technique on the basis of chromatic interval
groups that I developed some fifteen years ago. The aim of the research is to
obtain a serial technique that yields music with the lowest possible degrees
of tonality and consonance in a systematic way. To obtain this result, I had to
assess the concepts of tonality and consonance within my aesthetic universe.
Compared with how these concepts are understood by the culture to which
I belong, there appeared to be differences. In other words, my ideas of tonal-
ity and consonance belong to the idiosyncratic part of my aesthetic universe,
although they are still related to the prevailing conception of the ideas. Their
exploration was therefore a case of experimentation in art. It followed a scien-
tific procedure of experimentation: starting from the statement of a problem
(how to systematise atonality and dissonance in serial composition), the proce-
dure involved knowledge of sciences such as physics (of sound), psychophysics
(of sound), psychoacoustics, and mathematics. The solution of the problem
consisted of the modification of my serial technique on the basis of research
outcomes, which was then verified in the practice of composition.
My concept of tonality appeared to challenge the commonly accepted idea of
tonality because it is based entirely on an affinity with the tonal diatonic sets.25
My claim that this affinity is a necessary and sufficient condition to determine
the degree of tonality of any pitch class set is controversial because it does not
take into account aspects such as functionality, hierarchy, cadences, and rhythm
that are typical for tonal music.26 Therefore it would seem that my concept of
tonality is located in a part of my aesthetic universe containing elements that
are inconsistent with the acknowledged concept(s) of tonality of the culture I
belong to. To test this claim I developed an experiment on the perception of
tonality that supports my concept of tonality on the basis of diatonic affinity.
This experiment belongs to experimentation for the arts. I also composed sev-
eral pieces27 for the same purpose. Those pieces can be seen as experimentation
through art, or as tools for experimentation for art. The claim is further refuted
by the related experimental method28 of tonality analysis that I have developed,
which allows for the determination of the local and average degree of tonality
of any piece of music on the basis of the pitch classes of the chromatic scale.
This method shows that tonal music belonging to the common-practice and

25 The three tonal diatonic sets are the major set (Forte number 7–35), the harmonic minor set (7–32), and
the ascending melodic minor set (7–34).
26 This claim entails that it would be impossible to compose music based on all the seven pitch classes
of one of the tonal diatonic sets that would be considered not to be tonal (or modal) according to the
common definitions of tonality, in the sense that it would lack functionality, hierarchy, the occurrence
of cadences, or would require specific rhythm. My claim has not been refuted in practice so far.
27 3 Polytonal Variations for flute, viola da gamba, and piano (2011), which were composed in the context of
Hans Roels’s ORCiM experiment on hyperpolyphony.
28 I call this method experimental because it is an outcome of experimentation in art, based on experi-
mental ideas.

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modal repertoires29 has degrees of tonality that evolved together with the evo-
lution of the tonal idiom. It also explains the transitional period in the second
part of the nineteenth century where the boundaries between tonality and ato-
nality become blurred. This falsification test proves that my concept of tonal-
ity, idiosyncratic as it may be, has a link with widely accepted ideas of tonality,
and that the aesthetic area it belongs to has a common border with the rest of
Western culture.
Exploring the concepts of tonality and consonance in the idiosyncratic part
of my aesthetic universe led to the development of formulas for the quantifica-
tion of tonality and consonance. They are central laws of my personal aesthetic
universe that result from the exploration of that universe. In that sense they
are the result of experimentation in art. The validity of these laws is tested in
the practical part of my doctoral research: the composition of three orchestral
pieces, each representing one stage in my doctoral research, and each supple-
mented by a piece for a smaller group of instruments.30 Although the pieces
are based on the outcome of experimentation in art, they are not experimental
(through art) themselves. The three orchestral pieces—Danse de la terre (2010),
Danse de l’eau et de l’air (planned for 2014), and Danse du feu (2012)—are dances
representing the four metaphorical Empedoclean elements (earth, water, air,
and fire) that encompass my entire aesthetic universe—hence the name of the
project. They are synecdoches for the whole of my aesthetic universe in the
same way that the four Empedoclean elements stand (or stood) for the physical
universe. Mahler is reported to have said that “a symphony should be like the
world: all encompassing”31 (quoted in Barnett 2007, 185, my translation); this
can be interpreted as meaning that a symphony should be the expression of the
artist’s complete aesthetic universe. In that sense my orchestral cycle on the
elements can be called “symphonic” in the Mahlerian sense, each dance repre-
senting one aspect (or two in the case of Danse de l’eau et de l’air) of my aesthetic
universe. This aesthetic universe is not a metaphysical universe, since it is not
beyond the physical world. An aesthetic universe, as a cerebral construction, is
a physical entity—after all, the human brain and cerebral activity are physical
objects and processes—but at the same time it constitutes a world of a differ-
ent kind, governed by laws that do not exactly apply to the external physical
world. I call this an “endophysical world”:32 a world that is metaphysical—mys-
tical, miraculous, transcendent, virtual—within the physical world.
The meaning of the aesthetic ideas expressed in my three orchestral dances
of the Elements project consists for the most part of non-verbal concepts
(non-verbal ideas), and thus cannot be expressed in words. Still it is possible
to give a rough impression of some of the ideas related to the pieces, albeit

29 I use the term tonality in the broader sense “that refers to music based on the eight modes of the West-
ern church as well as the major-minor complexes of common-practice music” (Hyer 2002, 727–28).
30 The supplementing pieces are Le sourire infini des ondes for ensemble (2009), Un souffle de l’air que respirait
le passé for piano quartet (2011), and A l’image du monde . . . originel for piano (planned for 2013). Each
piece expresses additional ideas related to those expressed in the orchestral dances.
31 “Die Symphonie muss sein wie die Welt. Sie muss alles umfassen.”
32 “Endophysical” because it is situated within (the Greek endo means within, inside) the physical universe
but may be governed by laws that do not apply to the external physical world.

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in a rudimentary and non-comprehensive manner: Danse de la terre expresses

the idea of the (endo-) physicality of my aesthetic universe—matter (earth)
as material existence—by extension it expresses existing in general. Danse du
feu is an expression of the idea of the endophysical processes governed by my
aesthetic universe’s laws of tonality and consonance. It is an expression of the
idea of endophysical becoming. Together with Danse de la terre, this second dance
expresses all that exists: matter and material processes. Danse de l’eau et de l’air,
in turn, expresses the elusiveness entailed by matter and material processes:
impermanence, time and temporality, transience, the fact that what exists
could as well not have existed. It is about the contingency of being.

t he a l ’ i m aGe D u m on De P ro jec t

As we have discussed, the laws governing an aesthetic universe may differ from
universe to universe and from culture to culture. They may even deviate from
the laws of the physical universe. An artist can only be understood, however,
if the aesthetic (endophysical) laws of his or her aesthetic universe are similar
enough to those of the performers or audience, or to the laws of the physical
universe. Aesthetic universes that are close enough to other aesthetic universes
or to the physical universe, and the artworks that result from the urge to express
these aesthetic universes in artistic practice, are thus not “the [mirror] image of
the world but in the image of the world” to quote Eugène Ionesco (1962, 127,
my translation).33 This idea is central to the A l’image du monde project. Whereas
the Elements of an Aesthetic Universe project focused on the endophysical laws
of my aesthetic universe, the A l’image du monde project is intended to be an
expression of the relation between my aesthetic universe and the physical uni-
verse. It can therefore be called transphysical (building a bridge between the
endophysical aesthetic universe and the physical universe). The project will
consist of five pieces: A l’image du monde . . . originel (for piano solo), A l’image du
monde . . . double (for piano solo), A l’image du monde . . . multiple (for guitar solo),
A l’mage du monde . . . commentaire (for guitar and ensemble and/or piano and
ensemble), and Improvisation fixe sur une image (electro-acoustic composition).34
To date, the only piece in the project that has been completed is the elec-
tro-acoustic composition Improvisation fixe sur une image (2012), which was com-
posed as part of the A Day in My Life project35 at the Orpheus Research Centre
in Music. The piece is based on a recorded improvisation (improvisation fixe)
that—like all pieces belonging to A Day in My Life—had a poem as its inspira-

33 “L’œuvre d’art répond . . . au besoin de faire œuvre de création. . . . Le monde ainsi créé n’est pas l’image
du monde; il est à l’image du monde.”
34 The subtitles refer to Boulez’s Le marteau sans maître (1953–55, revised 1957), Figures–doubles–prismes
(1957–58 [as Doubles], revised 1963 and 1968), and Mémoriale ( . . . explosante-fixe . . . Originel) (1985). The
link with Boulez is clearly intertexual, but the titles of the pieces belonging to the A l’image du monde
project express a different meaning than they do for Boulez, although they are related to his work
(Boulez’s idea of “work in progress,” for instance, applies to the project). This emphasises that the scope
of expressed meaning in artistic creation is broad and is re-created actively by every subject involved
in the processes of artistic communication. In my artistic practice I have the freedom (and the duty) to
attach new meaning to Boulez’s ideas.
35 On which see Coessens and Douglas (2011).

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 Bart Vanhecke

tional source (it is in the image of the poem). I decoded the poem by creating an
aesthetic concept for it and by developing a web of meaning for that concept.
The meaning of the aesthetic concept was then merged with that of the piece I
intended to compose, which was, in a first stage, expressed (encoded) through
the recording of an improvisation on a bass flute, and then further developed
during the process of manipulation and recomposition of the recording.
The musical material for the improvisation was provided by a chromatic
interval group series constructed according to the outcomes of my doctoral
research. The intention was to assess the practical applicability of the out-
comes in the construction of the series, as well as to explore the way it feels to
work with the series, and to experience the intuitive embodied effect the series
might have on me during the process of composition. The composition process of
Improvisation fixe sur une image can therefore be seen as an example of experi-
mentation through art.36

c o nc lus i o n
This article started from the idea that an artist’s aesthetic universe is the set of
all the artist’s knowledge related to aesthetics, beauty, and the arts. The aes-
thetic universe consists of two parts: at its centre is the cultural part, which
contains the aesthetic knowledge the artist has in common with other people
belonging to the same culture. Surrounding the cultural part is the idiosyn-
cratic part of the aesthetic universe, which contains the artist’s aesthetic knowl-
edge that has not yet been adopted or accepted by his or her culture.
We have seen that artistic activity comprises artistic practice (creation or per-
formance) and artistic research, which constitute, respectively, the expression
and the exploration by the artist of (the ideas belonging to) his or her personal
aesthetic universe. The ideas thus expressed and explored may belong to the
cultural part as well as to the idiosyncratic part of the artist’s aesthetic universe.
When ideas in the idiosyncratic part are central to expression and exploration,
artistic activity becomes experimental. I called experimental artistic expression
“experimentation through art” (through the processes of creation and perfor-
mance, resulting in experimental music), and experimental artistic exploration
“experimentation in art” (within the aesthetic universe, resulting in experi-
mental ideas or tools). In addition to these two kinds of artistic experimenta-
tion, a third kind of experimentation was discussed: experimentation for art,
which is in fact scientific and not artistic experimentation, because—although
it is meant to serve the arts—it consists of a scientific rather than an artistic
procedure.
There is a correspondence between the three types of experimenta-
tion introduced in this article on the one hand and common conceptions of
artistic experimentation on the other: Experimentation through art corresponds
to the common idea of experimentation as innovativeness in artistic creation
(Nicholls), experimentation for art to the idea of scientific artistic experimenta-

36 CD, track 6: Improvisation fixe sur une image by Bart Vanhecke.

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 A New Path to Music

tion (Tenney). The third sense—referring to unpredictability or indeterminacy

in procedures or outcome (Cage)—was not considered experimental since
unpredictability and indeterminacy have become culturally accepted artistic
features.
Although the idea of experimentation in the arts is a logical consequence of
my concept of the aesthetic universe and its exploration and expression, I am
aware that it is a marginal concept of artistic experimentation. This entails that
many of the ideas developed in this article belong to the idiosyncratic part of
my aesthetic universe, and are experimental themselves. They result from my
venture into the unknown territory of my aesthetic universe, in which I, as an
explorer, try to clear a new path through the forest of my idiosyncratic aesthetic
ideas, bolstered by the conviction that:

Caminante, son tus huellas

el camino, y nada más;
Caminante no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar . . .37

References
Barnett, Andrew. 2007. Sibelius. New Haven, Drake, Stillman. 1978. Galileo at Work: His
CT: Yale University Press. Scientific Biography. Chicago: University of
Bernstein, Leonard. 1976. The Unanswered Chicago Press.
Question: Six Talks at Harvard. Cambridge, Gazzaniga, Michael S., Richard B. Ivry,
MA: Harvard University Press. and George R. Mangun. 2008. Cognitive
Boulez, Pierre. 1966. Relevés d’apprenti. Nuroscience: The Biology of the Mind. 3rd ed.
Collected and presented by Paule New York: W. W. Norton.
Thévenin. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Hyer, Brian. 2002. “Tonality.” In The
Translated by Herbert Weinstock as Notes Cambridge History of Western Music Theory,
of an Apprenticeship (New York: Knopf, edited by Thomas Christensen, 726–52.
1968). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brooks, William. 2012. “In re: ‘Experimental Ionesco, Eugène. 1962. Notes et contre-notes.
Music.’” Contemporary Music Review 31 (1): Paris: Gallimard. Translated by Donald
37–62. Watson as Notes and Counter Notes: Writings
Cage, John. 1958. “Composition as Process: on the Theatre (New York: Grove Press,
II. Indeterminacy.” In Silence: Lectures and 1964).
Writings, 1961, 35–40. Middletown, CT: Machado, Antonio. 1917. “Proverbios y
Wesleyan University Press. Cantares XXIX.” In Campos de Castilla,
Coessens, Kathleen, and Anne Douglas. 2011. edited by Geoffrey Ribbans, (1989) 2009,
On Calendar Variations. Banchory, UK: 222–3. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra
Woodend Barn Publishing. Nicholls, David. 1998. “Avant-Garde and
Cowell, Henry. (1930) 1996. New Musical Experimental Music.” In The Cambridge
Resources. Cambridge: Cambridge History of American Music, edited by David
University Press. Nicholls, 517–34. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

37 “Traveller, your footprints are the path, and nothing else; traveller there is no path. The path is made by
walking . . .” (Machado 1917, 222–3, my translation). This poem refers to an inscription in a monastery
in Toledo that was also used by Luigi Nono as the title for his piece No hay caminos, hay que caminar . . .
Andrej Tarkowskij (1987).

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 Bart Vanhecke

Popper, Karl R. 1979. Objective Knowledge: An 3rd ed. (1922) and first published 1978
Evolutionary Approach. Rev. ed. Oxford: (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Oxford University Press. Shawn, Allen. (2002) 2003. Arnold Schoenberg’s
Retallack, Dorothy L. 1973. The Sound of Music Journey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
and Plants. Santa Monica, CA: DeVorss. University Press. First published 2002
Saxer, Marion. 2007. “Nichts als Bluff ? Das (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
Experiment in Musik und Klangkunst Tenney, James. 1990. “Darmstadt Lecture
des 20. Jahrhunderts bis zur Gegenwart.” 1990.” In From Scratch: Collected Writings,
Musik & Ästhetik 43 (July): 53–67. edited by Larry Polansky, forthcoming.
Schoenberg, Arnold. (1975) 1984. Style and Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Idea: Selected Writings, edited by Leonard Ward, Jamie. 2010. The Student’s Guide to
Stein, translated by Leo Black. Berkeley: Cognitive Neuroscience. 2nd ed. Hove, UK:
University of California Press. Psychology Press.
———. (1978) 1983. Theory of Harmony, Webern, Anton. 1960. Der Weg zur Neuen
translated by Roy E. Carter. London: Musik, edited by Willi Reich. Vienna:
Faber and Faber. First published 1911 Universal Edition. Translated by Leo
as Harmonielehre (Vienna: Universal Black as The Path to the New Music
Edition). This translation based on the (London: Universal Edition, 1963).

104
 From Experimentation
to Construction
Richard Barrett
Institute of Sonology, The Hague

“Experimental” is a term we find used in quite a specific way in discussions

of contemporary music. Michael Nyman’s important book Experimental Music:
Cage and Beyond, first published in 1974, uses this word to describe a stylistic or
perhaps more correctly an attitudinal tendency beginning in the middle of the
twentieth century for which the work and ideas of John Cage formed a central
point of reference. I won’t be using the term “experimental” in this sense. I
would prefer to try to establish a way in which the term can be used meaning-
fully in relation to creative musical practice, rather than as a genre category. In
a trivial sense any composer can claim to be “experimental” for the sake of posi-
tioning him- or herself in a “market” relative to colleagues; in another trivial
sense any composer can claim that his or her working process involves experi-
mentation since very few of us create our work in a definitive form without any
kind of process of trial and critical feedback.
Coming as I originally did from an educational background in experimen-
tal science, I’m sometimes rather taken aback at the metamorphoses of mean-
ing that ideas such as experimentation and research undergo when applied to
non-scientific disciplines. We might also consider where and when the exper-
imentation takes place within a creative process. The English author B. S.
Johnson (1933–73) was often described as an “experimental novelist” because
of the unusual form his books took, one consisting for example of a pile of
unordered chapters in a box, but he himself resisted this description, saying
that the experimentation had all taken place by the time the finished novel
went to the publisher.
So what do I mean by “experimental” as it applies to music? Let’s first look at
what it means in its original (scientific) context—an “experiment” is a system-
atic procedure, an interrogation of some aspect of reality for the purpose of under-
standing and explaining it, enabling its integration into a more general under-
standing, which is thereby changed, subtly or radically.
Crucially, an experiment is carried out to test a well-defined hypothesis, with
the intent of either developing the hypothesis (thus leading to further experi-
ments) or definitively disproving it. Often the outcome, or at least the desired
outcome, of an experiment is not really in doubt at any point. If the result fails
to conform to expectations, the scientist’s next port of call is to examine pos-

105
 Richard Barrett

sible inconsistencies in the way the experiment was set up, and only then to
begin considering whether the theory that gave rise to the initial hypothesis
needs to be overhauled. At other times the outcome of an experiment might
be completely unknown; but to frame any kind of experiment you need to have
some idea of what you’re looking for—you can send a robot to explore an alien
planet but you need to choose which kinds of sensors to install on it. In gen-
eral, a process of experimentation is an open-ended one, every stage of which
is informed by the result of previous stages, while the direction or directions of
an overarching research programme are kept constantly and critically in view. I
could realistically describe my own musical work in that kind of way, although I
wouldn’t only describe it in this way. At other times I would describe it more in
terms of its social and political implications and aspirations, for example, but
as I continue I think it will become clear that what I’d be describing is the same
whatever angle it’s viewed from.
But what are my questions? It’s not really possible to define them so simply,
since what I’m involved in is a lifetime’s work for which a lifetime will almost
certainly not suffice. Ultimately my project will certainly be abandoned, sooner
or later, without necessarily being any nearer to a conclusion than it is now, or
was at the outset. However, one way of describing what I do would involve a
process of experimentation oriented towards discovering something about the
structure of the imagination, in all its aspects. I happen also to be convinced
that in doing so one might in addition discover something profound about the
nature of reality, since questioning the nature of creativity and the imagination
leads to questioning the nature of human consciousness and thereby to onto-
logical conundrums that overlap with the terrain of philosophy and fundamen-
tal science.
In any case, this central question proliferates and permeates into every aspect
of my musical-creative activity, from the exploration of the limits of perception
and perceptibility to the exploration of different ways of combining planned
and spontaneous creation both in the composition process and in perfor-
mance, to the exploration through music of connections between supposedly
“extra-musical” ideas and models, and so on. I should also make it clear that
while I could say that making music is my way of trying to understand things,
it’s also my way of trying to share and communicate these things. For me, lis-
tening came first, my composition is an extension of my listening, and I don’t
regard it as “more creative” than listening but creative in a different way. If the
music I’m making can be experienced creatively by listeners then somehow my
“research question” is being addressed.
One reason why the word “experimentation” is used with so many mis-
leading connotations in music is because to be meaningful it has to encom-
pass a dimension of risk, of failure, adequately to address whatever question is
being asked, which sits rather uneasily with a still-prevalent notion that what
a musician presents in front of an audience should be at least in its own terms
“successful” (otherwise the audience is being short-changed in some way). If a
scientist claimed that all his or her experiments were inevitably successful, we
would do well to be a little suspicious.

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 From Experimentation to Construction

Let’s return to music once more. I think one of the important ideas about
whatever we could call experimentation in music-making is the desire to
involve the listener in the process of discovery, in other words to try and com-
municate the desire and exhilaration one experiences in trying to address one’s
questions in such a way that listeners may experience them for themselves,
whether the result comes across as “successful” or not. In other words, I try to
create situations where the listener is encouraged to be a fellow experimenter
rather than an experimental subject.
Experimentation in music (and not only in music of course) involves an asser-
tion of a kind of freedom which is rarely if ever possible in most areas of most
people’s lives. I think I need hardly underline that the musical world and its
institutions are not set up in such a way as to facilitate this way of doing things.
As a result, while the freedom to explore an infinity of imaginative possibili-
ties is, I believe, one of the most important things that creative musicians can
express, many if not most creative musicians operate as if the priority were to
create a niche for themselves, a recognisable and marketable brand, in a way
which apes the pressures and priorities of the commercial world although
unfortunately usually without the financial rewards.
For me the experimental approach requires a certain continuity, perhaps
akin to a “laboratory” in which individual projects can take their place within
a longer-term collective programme of exploration and discovery. For this rea-
son, over the last twenty-five years or so the range of my musical collaborations
has been rather small compared to that of many other composers over a similar
period, although on the other hand I would go so far as to say that the depth of
these collaborations has been constantly increasing.
Before moving on to more specific matters, a few words on improvisation,
since this is a word that often seems to be coupled with “experimentation” in
a musical context. I would like to define improvisation as denoting the sponta-
neous element in musical performance, which either takes place within some
kind of implicit or explicit framework or (as in “free improvisation”) creates
and transforms that framework as it proceeds. I would define composition as any
kind of musical creative process or the results thereof. Therefore, within this
scheme improvisation is a method of composition, no more and no less. I believe
that this way of characterising these terms is clearer and more useful than
most I’ve come across, and in particular clearer and more useful than views
that define composition and improvisation as distinct or even opposed ways
of making music. I say “useful” because this way of looking at things, which
I’ve been developing since about 2003, made for the first time coherent sense
of my musical activities up until that time and opened perspectives for their
further continuation and expansion—in other words, returning to the scien-
tific analogies I mentioned earlier, a hypothesis emerging from experimental
results suggested the nature and direction of further experimentation, and also
that what previously might have seemed like irreconcilable phenomena may
be understood through the development of a deeper “theory” to be unified in
unexpected ways.

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 Richard Barrett

During this period, one strand I’ve been regularly returning to has been a
series of compositions, eleven so far, which go under the title codex. This title
is intended to invoke the idea of an ancient text that has survived in an incom-
plete form, requiring reconstruction and conjecture before it can be inter-
preted and understood, and these compositions are all so to speak in various
states of incompleteness. Some were created for specific people and occasions,
while others embody a set of proposals that may be realised in different ways by
different people on different occasions. I’ll mention two quite different exam-
ples, codex VII and IX, which are both on CD as well as finding their way onto
YouTube, in order to stress what I consider their “experimental” nature.
Codex VII was composed and performed with seven members of the ensem-
ble Champ d’Action and ten students from the conservatoires of Ghent and
Antwerp in 2007. I arrived in Antwerp with a schedule for twenty rehearsal
sessions over a period of nine days but purposely without any “musical ideas.”
The composition process then began by my recording (partly-directed) solo
improvisations by each of the seven members of the ensemble as a basis for
the electronic materials I would use in the performance. The next stage was to
rehearse musical processes and textures based on these improvisations with
small groups, where each ensemble member would be combined with one or
two of the student participants (several of whom had joined the ensemble in
the meantime!) playing the same or similar instruments. This was followed by
combining the small groups with the electronic sounds I had in the meantime
been working on, and then the first tutti rehearsal in which we tried out differ-
ent superimpositions of these groups. Only after this stage did I write out the
one-page score of codex VII, which acted only as a minimal reminder of what
we’d been working on. While the results of this “experiment” have fed into sub-
sequent work in many different ways, its musical result could only exist at a
particular time and place with particular participants.
Codex IX for nine players was conceived for different circumstances: first
as a stage in the development of a collective improvisational-compositional
practice between myself and the ELISION ensemble, and second as a musical
laboratory in which we could work together with a technical team from the
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology on developing the performative use
of a real-time sound-spatialisation system that could be adapted to any kind of
performance space. Both of these “research questions” were directly related
to the planning of my most extended work, CONSTRUCTION, a two-hour
composition for voices, instrumental ensemble, and three-dimensional sound
installation.1
CONSTRUCTION actually does have something to do with “experimental
music” in the historical genre sense, through its connection with the music
of Cornelius Cardew (to whose memory it’s dedicated) and in particular The
Great Learning, of which I took part in the first complete performance in 1984,
three years after Cardew’s death. The Great Learning is a cycle of compositions

1 CD, track 1, features an extract from the premiere of CONSTRUCTION at the Huddersfield Festival of
Contemporary Music, November 2011.

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 From Experimentation to Construction

on texts from Confucius for a large collective of improvising performers that

takes two evenings to perform in its entirety; it was written between 1969 and
1972 for the Scratch Orchestra, an experiment in collective musical creativity
of which Cardew was a founder member and whose aesthetic identity was to
a great extent defined by The Great Learning. This work consists of seven “par-
agraphs” corresponding to the divisions of the original text, the longest being
Paragraph 5, of which a typical performance lasts around 90 minutes. I’m not
going to describe it in detail except to say that it consists of two halves, the first
consisting of a kind of collage of various different types of events taking place
simultaneously: songs, improvisations, sonic and structural suggestions, the-
atrical actions . . . all of which require discipline and the learning of actions by
heart, and all of which have a clear and identifiable purpose about them even
when several are happening at the same time. The second half of Paragraph 5
is a free improvisation by the same performers, who in our performance num-
bered 30 or 40, including many former Scratch Orchestra members.
One thing that stuck in my mind about this experience was the way that this
improvisation, despite being in many different senses “anarchic,” was some-
how informed and given particular qualities by the actions that preceded it, by
their disciplined nature, without Cardew having to say anything in the score
about how the performers should approach it. Later I found myself often think-
ing back to this experience and the way it might create the conditions for the
conception of a music whose identity as a composition would have clarity with-
out being defined in advance to the point of giving instructions to perform-
ers: they’re given a common point of departure and left to use their imagina-
tion and sense of responsibility. This seemed to me, as it no doubt seemed to
Cornelius Cardew, to be trying to say something about how a society in balance
with itself might become self-organised, so that the idea had resonances far
beyond addressing the relationship between spontaneity and preparation in
narrowly musical terms.
The central ideas of CONSTRUCTION, the central questions one might say,
are concerned with the relationship between utopian thinking and reality. It
became the outcome of a long process of experimentation, which included the
aforementioned codex pieces, several of which provided raw materials for it, as
well as the experience of performing several components from the eventual
work as separate pieces over a period of some years; at one and the same time
it was also an experiment in (among other things) applying the lessons learned
from the Great Learning experience to a work with a very different aesthetic.
From the moment it was conceived, we (the ensemble’s director Daryl Buckley
and I) realised that a new collective improvisational practice would need to be
developed that would go far beyond anything we had previously done, in order
to create the conditions whereby over twenty musicians would be able to pool
their imaginations into a spontaneously creative ensemble. This took many
years working on intermediate stages, which weren’t all successful, but the pro-
cess of experimentation (both musically and technologically) was something
that could only authentically be done under performance conditions with an
audience present.

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 Richard Barrett

The form that CONSTRUCTION takes is of four interwoven strands or

cycles, each consisting of five parts, some of which can be and have been per-
formed separately.2 Two of these cycles relate in some structural/poetic way to
utopian ideas, one of them principally vocal-instrumental and the other featur-
ing electronic sounds. The other two cycles represent realities with which these
utopias are confronted: one is a highly-abridged setting in ancient Greek of the
Trojan Women by Euripides and the other is a series of “laments” featuring a solo
violin. These four cycles overlap and otherwise touch each other in various dif-
ferent ways over the course of two hours, together forming a complex network
of interrelationships that create a single whole out of all these components, the
durations of which range between one and twenty minutes and whose instru-
mentations range from a quartet to the entire ensemble. One aspect of the
“experimentation” involved in this composition was to determine whether it
was able to sustain its intensity over such an unbroken total duration.
On the day in 2005 when the entire shape of CONSTRUCTION first occurred
to me, an important feature was the idea that it should end with around twenty
minutes of free improvisation by the entire ensemble. In other words, a neces-
sarily provisional conclusion to all the many confrontations between musics
and ideas that have articulated the previous one hundred minutes is found by
the entire performing ensemble as a collective, and found anew in each perfor-
mance, each time evolving in a different way from the previous music and—I
dared to hope—discovering a new music that couldn’t have been brought into
being any other way, certainly not through the imagination of a single person.
My feeling is that finishing the score and giving the first performance have the
nature more of a beginning than an ending—particularly this last part of the
work, which seems to open perspectives for the future development of think-
ing and practice both in musical terms and beyond. In other words, this time it
isn’t the result of an experiment but the experiment itself.

References
Barrett, Richard. 2011. “Construction Nyman, Michael. (1974) 1999. Experimental
of CONSTRUCTION.” Richard Music: Cage and Beyond. London: Studio
Barrett Music. Accessed 28 June 2013. Vista. 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge
http://richardbarrettmusic.com/ University Press.
CONSTRUCTIONessay.pdf.

2 A more detailed essay on CONSTRUCTION (Barrett 2011) may be found at richardbarrettmusic.com,

where the full score may also be downloaded in pdf form.

110
 Artistic Research and
Experimental Systems:
The Rheinberger Questionnaire
and Study Day: A Report

Michael Schwab
Orpheus Research Centre in Music; Royal College of Art, London;
Zurich University of the Arts

1. i ntr o duc ti o n
When discussing experimentation in artistic research, one could simply relate
it to experimental art practices of the twentieth century, pointing out that this
is a well-established paradigm in the history of art. However, the problem of
epistemology remains: how does experimentation—in particular when it
comes to art, music, or design—contribute to knowledge and understanding?
This is particularly difficult in light of the work of Karl Popper, who, in The
Logic of Scientific Discovery ([1959] 2002), claims that there is no logical basis
to induction, that is, the formation of universal statements based on singu-
lar observations. In short, Popper’s theory suggests that knowledge does not
somehow emerge from experimentation, but rather that it can only be achieved
through the empirical testing of universal statements. While it is possible to
falsify any such statement through a single test, it is impossible to verify univer-
sal statements once and for all, since it cannot be guaranteed that future tests
may not falsify those statements that were believed to be true. Falsification thus
delivers a degree of certainty that verification does not.
As a consequence, for Popper, “the logic of scientific discovery” starts with
the making of universal statements (i.e., the formulation of a proposition or
theory), while their empirical testing (i.e., experimentation or practice), impor-
tant as it may be, can only happen after this. Popper suggests a theory-first
approach, giving experimental practice a secondary role in the development
of knowledge. Although this position is quite persuasive, it is unclear whether
it reflects even the way in which scientific discoveries are made—that is, are
empirical scientists really simply thinking up statements that they then aim to
falsify, or is there some other dimension to their practice?

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 Michael Schwab

Indeed, one may argue that because Popper narrowed empirical science to a
problem of logic, a counter movement has become possible, which since then
has been called “the practice turn in contemporary theory” (Schatzki, Knorr
Cetina, and von Savigny 2001). In this context, Andrew Pickering (2008, vii),
for example, suggests that a theory of the development of knowledge is needed
that “has a truly evolutionary character, rather than a causal one.” Hans-Jörg
Rheinberger adds an important voice to this context through notions such
as “experimental system,” “epistemic thing,” and “technical object,” all of
which he developed in the context of his major case study on the “discovery”
of transfer RNA and the development of the new field of molecular genetics
(Rheinberger 1997).
For Rheinberger, however, a notion such as “discovery” must be put into
inverted commas or even totally omitted, since it suggests that something
such as transfer RNA existed before it was made manifest in the experimen-
tal system (ibid., 133). Following Jacques Derrida, he believes that this process
is more complex. According to this position, when knowledge is produced,
its origin is co-produced along with it. This necessarily makes us believe that
what is made has been there all along. Derrida spent much of his professional
life deconstructing such origins in the field of philosophy. With this in mind,
Rheinberger is careful not to suggest origins of knowledge outside knowl-
edge-generating experimental systems, since these origins could, in turn, be
deconstructed. It would also mean turning a blind eye to the way in which,
in his opinion, experimental systems actually work and produce knowledge.
This means that the complex artificial settings of experimental systems tend
to naturalise their findings. As Steven Shapin (1984) suggests, following Robert
Boyle, experiments produce “matters of fact,” that is, self-evident realities in
the material itself rather than simply statements about reality.
As Henk Borgdorff (2012) proposes, artistic practice may produce works
that have similarly self-evident and material meanings, which—following
Rheinberger’s proposal—he takes as yet unknown entities that are instrumen-
tal for future knowledge. The suggestion is that within what is not (yet) known,
artistic or aesthetic operations may be in place that can be called “research,”
not because they deliver findings but because they allow future knowledge to
be anticipated.
In what may be called a small “pilot study,”1 I interviewed a number of
ORCiM researchers to understand better how Rheinberger’s notions might be
employed productively in the context of music research. At the same time, lim-
itations have also become apparent, which need further investigation to shed
new light on the practice shared by experimental artists and scientists and the

1 This “pilot study” and its interviews constitute a simple reflexive tool that allowed me to open up and
illustrate questions; there was no serious methodological ground to this study, since the sample size was
very small, knowledge about Rheinberger’s theory was limited, and the disciplinary and personal back-
ground of the researchers was neglected. Thus, what follows has to be taken as a rhetorical device rather
than a scientific claim. Because of this, interviewees have been made anonymous. Thank you, though, to
K, P, S, and V (and also G, whose contribution, coming from a different perspective, is not quoted in this
chapter).

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difference that discipline makes to the type of knowledge that is produced and
the processes that are employed.

2. t h e Q ues ti o nna i r e : de F in itio n s

2.1 Experimental systems

Experiments require a context, which needs to be coherent and finely cali-
brated to lead to original results. Despite the high level of control, these results
can surprise the experimenter, because a successful experimental system
becomes increasingly independent of the “researcher’s wishes” (Rheinberger
1997, 24). Experimental systems “are systems of manipulation designed to give
unknown answers to questions that the experimenters themselves are not yet
able clearly to ask” (ibid., 28).
The experimental system is set up materially (e.g., through the kinds of
instruments that are used) and also socially, institutionally, financially, geo-
graphically, etc.—in short, in dimensions that are usually overlooked when the
focus is placed on individual experiments. At the same time, experimental sys-
tems are “the smallest functional units of research” (Rheinberger 2012, 92) and
as such need to be as coherent as possible to produce a surprising difference.

2.2 Technical objects

Technical objects are key operators in an experimental system and are brought
into a particular constellation in order to conduct experiments. Technical
objects often result from previous experimentation and “embody the knowl-
edge of a given research field at a given time” (Rheinberger 1997, 245). In an
experimental system, these objects are ready-to-hand and function to conduct
and control the experiments. The fixity that comes with technical objects limits
the variables in an experimental system, but technical objects may again be put
into jeopardy.

2.3 Unpredicted events and epistemic things

An epistemic thing is the research object that emerges from an experimental
system. Epistemic things “present themselves in a characteristic, irreducible
vagueness. This vagueness is inevitable because, paradoxically, epistemic things
embody what one does not yet know” (ibid., 28). Thus, before having “discov-
ered” “new knowledge,” the experimenter is presented with phenomena that
are unknown, unpredicted, and still unexplained.
According to Rheinberger, the knowledge of an epistemic thing lies in
its future. The term “epistemic thing” is used to indicate the unknown as it
arrives in a knowledge domain, in the experimental system, or in science as a
whole. Rheinberger seems to suggest that research is a process separate from
science, whose products—epistemic things—science transforms into knowl-
edge, allowing for new technical objects that are in turn used to further develop
existing experimental systems.

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2.4 Expositions
Due to the scientific bias toward text, Rheinberger (2010, chapter 13) sees
within science an “economy of the scribble” that plays a part in the transforma-
tion of epistemic things into proper scientific pieces of writing via laboratory
notes, posters, conference papers, etc. Although this might be the case in the
arts, there may also be other modes of recording, transformation, and pres-
entation that settle epistemic things in a discursive context.
The notion of “exposition” is not used by Rheinberger. It is meant to indicate
all possible forms of transformation that bring out (“expose”) knowledge from
the experimental system and the unpredictable events it produces. Without
exposition, one may argue, there might be unexpected events, but we may fail
to form them into epistemic things. The “writing systems” that are used are
thus crucial to the formation of knowledge.2

3. t h e Q ues tio n n aire : F in d in g s

From the questionnaire and the interviews I conducted, it is not possible to

make any claims regarding the existence (or not) of experimental systems
in artistic-research practice. First, we would have to be certain that we are
indeed dealing with artistic research, which is not easy given the still on-going
debates regarding its definition. In comparison, by investigating a historic case,
Rheinberger may have been less troubled by an assessment of the validity of the
source material for his study. Second, one would need a deeper investigation
into the detailed workings of those projects: what people think about them
may be different from how those projects actually operate. More complex, mul-
ti-layered research needs to be conducted, which relies on historic data rather
than simply the memory of individual researchers.
I can thus report only on statements about a selection of research projects in
relation to Rheinberger’s thinking, rather than assess those projects.

3.1 On experimental systems

It is difficult clearly to delineate experimental systems because historical dis-
tance is lacking. It is obvious, however, that references are made across “pro-
jects” and that one project often leads to another. It is also obvious, though,
that a simple notion such as “my practice” is too wide. One researcher (P),
for instance, made a clear distinction between learning to play an instrument
(learning a practice) and responding to problems of practice. There is, how-
ever, a sense that something akin to experimental systems also exists in music
and art, and that this “something” is equally complex, involving, for example,
material, social, monetary, geographical, and institutional dimensions.

2 For a further debate on expositions and their relevance to artistic research in the context of experi-
mentation, see my other chapter in this book, “The Exposition of Practice as Research as Experimental
Systems.”

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Despite problems of definition, all participants made it very clear that their
experimental system was set up in response to problems inherent in perfor-
mance practice:

P: [with reference to Gilles Deleuze (1968; see also Ott 2010)] I think we’ve greatly lost
affectivity in the last two hundred years due to the excessive way of narrowing classical music
down to the final text and the final performance and the final recording—we’ve reduced all these
possibilities and we’re not entering the sphere of the affect.

V: Finally what I’m searching for is the form with which I’m also struggling, this form of concert
or Liederabend, because I really find the form very bothering. I do feel it’s dead.

K: I found the constraints in classical music so hard that classical music becomes very
unexperimental in the end. Often these constraints are not only material but also ideological.

However, despite such a critical tone, the researchers whom I interviewed seem
to be unwilling to suggest that traditional performances do not work. Rather, it
seems that they are concerned by the comparative ease with which traditional
performances can be produced and consumed without any further relevance to
themselves and the audience.
This may be explained with reference to Gaston Bachelard, whom
Rheinberger also references, and who, in his The Formation of the Scientific Mind,
lists a number of obstacles to science, most importantly the “first obstacle:
primary experience,” which is “the experience we place before and above that
criticism which is necessarily an integral part of the scientific mind” (Bachelard
2002, 31). Intensified production of primary experience through performance
practice can be seen as such an obstacle for a researcher, while, at the same
time, also being a prerequisite. As one researcher says:

P: This is a little bit strange, but we need this common opinion in order to show
that we’re able to fight it and that we want to create perforations for other possible
worlds.

3.2 On technical objects

Initially, “technical objects” seemed a suitable name for all the types of materi-
als brought into a performance setting, including scores, musical instruments,
computer equipment, habits, and institutional parameters such as location
or funding. It seems that, depending on the desired accuracy, researchers will
be able to produce virtually infinite lists of “stuff ” that they use or rely upon
within their experimental systems. In turn, this begs the question of whether
such lists will actually contribute to the understanding of an experimental
system if one does not foreground those technical objects that are crucial for
the performance in a specific setting, since otherwise the results could not
have been achieved. In effect, the more important a technical object is for the

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experimental setting, the more detailed its description needs to be to under-

stand its particular relevance.
In doing so, one may be able to trace what one researcher (V) called “the
point of convergence” at which new solutions and/or experiences may emerge.
For this to happen, two aspects seem to be particularly important. First, inti-
mate knowledge of the key technical objects is assumed. As was pointed out
again and again, for the researchers an experimental situation was not one of
“free” play and association but of tight control:

V: My performances are not experimental in [the sense] that I have no idea what’s going to
happen, which could be the case . . . But that’s not exactly what I’m doing. I have a lot of
spontaneous action related to text and related to movement or gesture but there’s a pretty rigid
frame of pieces we know we’re going to perform in such and such way.

S: That’s one of the suggestions that I would make: the unknown is much less unknown than
you think . . . when we get into it, it doesn’t have the sense of walking into the unknown. I think
when we start playing what you . . . hear sounds like three people knowing what to do.

Second, the setting up of those “specific time and space conditions” (K) include
degrees of distortions and misappropriations where the function of an ele-
ment can fluctuate during a performance, which in turn requires a description
of technical objects in not only stable but also unstable states. A distinction
between technical object and epistemic thing may thus be difficult to make,
as Rheinberger also suggests when he says that between them there is only a
functional and no structural difference (Rheinberger 2010, 30), since the one
may slip into the other. Furthermore, when a score, for example, is performed
as part of an experimental system, it is unclear whether this score can ever only
be a technical object, since as artwork it may escape a reduction to technology.
In turn, this may mean that the building blocks of artistic research are actu-
ally open, which makes a distinction between technical objects and epistemic
things potentially impossible.

V: I feel it [a particular way of performing] is not a technical object in the sense of

Rheinberger because within the arts we’ll never know whether it works exactly the
way we want it to work. If I have three or four performances in a row of the same
piece and I have the feeling . . . after the first one, “Oh, I found this epistemic thing
and I’m going to think about it and I’m going to use it as a technical object in the
second one,” it might not work at all.

However, it seems that at the “point of convergence” the researchers insert

precisely those technical objects that represent the historical problems alluded
to in section 3.1 (a score, a particular performance form, a cultural setting, etc.)
to give them potential for transformation. In other words, the “historical prob-
lems” can only be seen as problems from a particular epistemic horizon that
does not require solutions so much as the ability to “wrap” those problems into
quasi-functional technical objects that may in time disintegrate and open up
new possible futures.

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3.3 On epistemic thing

There is substantial evidence that the researchers believe their practice to be
epistemically motivated. When compared to Henk Borgdorff ’s analysis (2012),
there is, however, less emphasis on the artwork as epistemic thing, while a
performance of a work seems to be sought that exposes the work’s epistemic
potential.

S: If you look at epistemic things in the development of the music you find them in those
moments when you decide “This is how this ten-minute piece should go” or “This is the way it
should progress from here to there.”

P: For me, it’s not a question of playing the piece better or worse. It’s a question of opening up
more horizons. In this specific concert situation, things become in a way self-evident. It’s a gain
situation for everybody. The cultivated listener recognises this and the not-so-informed listener
has this experience of something happening there that he wants to listen to.

V: I believe that in a successful, authentic performance the score and the performer and the
audience come together in one moment, which gives the audience the possibility to grasp an idea
of how this piece, which is a historic piece, is relevant to this person living today.

K: This project allowed me to merge something which maybe I didn’t do before—at least not at
that level—to merge private and public life. It’s a kind of exploration of possible worlds and of
an experience that I haven’t had.

At least two things have to be said here. First, when discussing epistemic
things during the interviews, the participants generally referred to particu-
lar types of intense experiences rather than an initial lack of understanding
that would lead to future knowledge. One may conclude that Rheinberger
over-emphasises a negative experience regarding knowledge (the not-yet
knowing) against a positive experience regarding aesthetics. This bias may be
explained in at least two ways: the personal experience might be lacking from
the documents Rheinberger analysed, and the scientists themselves, by focus-
ing exclusively on the knowledge-outcomes, may have disregarded aesthetic
implications.
Thus, while the researchers clearly report forms of epistemic gain, there
seems to be less lag or deferral, that is, phases of not knowing. As one researcher
put it:

S: In the lower level of the development, these cycles are perhaps very quick, in a
sense, so an epistemic thing turns into a technical object even before you’ve finished
the process of making a piece.

Or to put it positively, there may be artistic solutions that operate before prop-
ositional knowledge is reached, which may even make that knowledge less
desirable.

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This ties in with the second point. In Rheinberger’s understanding, history is

projected by research insofar as the unexpected event has to be caught up and
realised as scientific knowledge. While some researchers whom I interviewed
were also looking for new artistic forms, there is also a sense that a potential
experienced in the material through performance may need to be protected
as potential rather than converted into a reality of knowledge. One researcher
(P) referred to Nietzsche’s term Unzeitgemäss (untimely), which not only has the
potential for a future but also has the potential to transgress the historic order
of past, present, and future and thus the need to make history.3

3.4 On expositions
In comparison to the other questions, the section on “expositions” raised very
few concerns and a limited debate, which seems to be because expositions are
what performers actually make when they perform. The primary site for the
exposition of research is thus the performance, which may also be made availa-
ble on CD or DVD as a derivative. All researchers report that they are comfort-
able with the production of performance-lectures, conference papers, and aca-
demic texts. It is striking, however, that despite questions of form as reported
above, there seems to be a desire to solve problems of form within the form
rather than by breaking it.
However, two aspects deserve further attention. First, the role of documen-
tation as an instrument for reflection seems to be of particular importance, sig-
nalling a change in the function of the performance and, moreover, to the very
way in which it is constructed—with additional equipment to be taken care of
and considered. How documentation may affect a performance is a question
that deserves more detailed attention. Regardless of this, however, it seems that
as performance moves into experimentation it becomes a generator of data as
well as of experience. This, in turn, raises questions of data management and
analysis, and of how such analysis may be (re)presented.
The second important aspect is a consequence of this shift to data. Once data
is available, events may—through editing—be traced and/or reconstructed in
the data itself, which in turn may lead to changes to the experimental system
and thus future performances. According to Rheinberger, rather than speaking
of data, one should thus speak of “facta in the sense of primary products of the
research process. They acquire the horizon of their possible meaning within
spaces of representation in which material traces and inscriptions—graph-
emes in a very general sense—become recorded, articulated, dislocated, rein-
forced, marginalized, and substituted. Researchers ‘think’ within the confines
of such spaces of representation, within the opportunistic and hybrid context
of the representational machinery at hand making up the technical conditions
of an experimental system” (Rheinberger 2004, 6).
From the few interviews that I conducted, however, no general picture
emerges that supports such a position. There may be many reasons for this.

3 For a more extended discussion of the problem “history” see my introduction to Experimental Systems:
Future Knowledge in Artistic Research (Schwab 2013).

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In part, it may be because documentation was not at the centre of my inves-

tigation; or, it may be because clear distinctions between performance and
research practice do not (yet) exist and that, as a consequence, the latter are not
(yet) sufficiently developed; there may, however, also be the distinct possibility
that Rheinberger’s thinking is less relevant to this context.
Despite such doubts, working with “data” has proved productive, as this quo-
tation indicates:

P: I needed a visualisation of the written information I’d generated—written reflections, written

articles, written essays—but I didn’t come to the visual representations that I came to years later
. . . And this was the moment when I realised what I’d produced.

While this quotation does not explicitly consider documentation on the same
informational level as written texts (and thus may contradict the point made
above), it nevertheless makes clear that for P, despite being a music performer,
his research is very much dependent on information, and more specifically the
editing (“visualisation”) of information in ways that produce “facta,” that is,
matters-of-fact that are considered to pre-date the moment of realisation.
Situating expositionality within the paradigm of information does not, how-
ever, say much about the possibility that it may also be traced within perfor-
mance itself. Unfortunately, I did not gather enough evidence—nor did I ask
the right questions—to address this issue, which must be left for a future study.

4. d i s c us s i o n
During a study day at the Orpheus Institute in June 2012, ORCiM researchers
had the chance to discuss with Hans-Jörg Rheinberger their understanding of
his work. It was also an opportunity to invite him to consider some of the issues
that arose from the questionnaire and the responses that were given. Needless
to say, while we were able to narrow the gap between scientific and artistic
understandings of “experimentation,” it was not possible ultimately to decide
whether a theory of experimental systems can actually be applied to artistic
experimentation.
This may also be because, as Rheinberger explained, his theory and the
notions he uses (in particular “experimental system,” “epistemic thing,” and
“technical object”) are explicitly situated in a particular historical (predomi-
nantly twentieth century) as well as disciplinary context (molecular biology),
and that even within the sciences, they may not be applicable to other contexts.
It is thus important to look through the particular, situated elements of the
theory and the notions that Rheinberger uses and try to trace what scientific
experimentation might be when it is transposed into art. An attempt to do so
by using his notions may necessarily challenge artists to use a language that
is not theirs to explain what they do. At the same time, the questionnaire has
shown that it is possible, in principle, for artists to enter this challenge and that,
moreover, a more considered understanding of artistic experimental research
practice can be achieved.

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P: Rheinberger’s ideas seemed to me to be very effective. They have the potential

to effectively help me to be more precise . . . So my first goal with the idea of
experimental system was to use it in a pragmatic way and to use the terminology of
Rheinberger in [my] project.

We may thus characterise the “Rheinberger Questionnaire” as a conceptual

“technical object” that was introduced into on-going artistic research practice
to trace epistemic processes. So, what may have been traced?
Until more conclusive research on the role of experimentation in artistic
research has been carried out, I suggest that we work with the hypothesis that
a theory of “experimental systems” may be applicable to artistic practice if one
focuses on processes around the unknown (research), while, in regard to pro-
cesses of the known (science), there seems to be only limited usefulness. In
other words, a notion such as “epistemic thing,” which refers to what one does
not yet know, is much less problematic than a notion such as “technical object,”
which suggests not only functional neutrality but, with technology, also a par-
ticular form that knowledge is supposed to take as it emerges.
While Rheinberger may be right in noting the dominance of technology in
the science that he studies, technology may not be as central to the knowl-
edge-future that artistic research produces. In fact, if we were to generalise
technological determinations of science and expect artistic practice to be
explained likewise, we would potentially lose a critical angle against the domi-
nance of technology that, for instance, Heidegger (e.g., 1977) detects within the
very notion of (modern) science. This is not to say that art needs to be sketched
in opposition to technology; rather, in the present context, it suffices to say that
the development of technology cannot credibly be seen as artistic research’s
(sole) objective. If this is the case, the term “technical object” is misleading if
used to indicate how outcomes reappear in research. Moreover, as suggested
in section three, if outcomes were of such technical quality, it is questionable
whether they would remain of artistic interest.
At the same time, the notion of “technical object” occupied an important
place and point of reference in my “experiment” since it was neither impossible
nor particularly difficult for the researchers to think of a score or presentation
form, for example, as such an object. Rather than simply using those technical
objects in an experimental setup, they all seem to want to suspend precisely
the technical character of the object in question. This holds true even for their
own output, which is conceptualised essentially not as a new object but as the
giving of a future to existing objects that are deemed overdetermined, closed,
or understood.
It is important to remember that Rheinberger’s thinking particularly sup-
ports such functional fluctuations, where the epistemic horizon of technical
objects may be reopened; the question, however, is how much determination
(i.e., technicity) artistic research can afford, and if there is not a proto-techni-
cal, epistemic stratum that is aesthetically rather than propositionally secured.
Aesthetics here, however, needs to be understood as a complex interrelation-
ship of sensation/perception (aisthesis) and artistic practice, while avoiding the

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post-Hegelian established meaning of aesthetics as philosophy of art, which

proposes a philosophical (that is, a propositional) destiny for art.4 One may
argue that artistic research, in providing a producer’s approach to knowledge,
serves to stabilise such aesthetico-epistemic processes outside a philosophy of
art.
In the comments of all researchers there is thus reference to what may be
described as the aesthetic suspension of the epistemic for epistemic reasons, that
is, to affect an audience’s understanding of a piece of music and its relevance
in the respective contemporary context (see quotations in section 3.3). It is
because of this epistemic purpose that the term “epistemic thing” may have
proved useful to the researchers, since being different to “work” or “compo-
sition,” it allows the voicing of a concern that may be overlooked when artists
“perform” a “score.”
These scores (or artistic traditions in general) are the material that
re-emerges as again epistemically open in a meaningful artistic experimental
system. It is set against a perceived epistemic closure that happens when such
scores or traditions are simply re-performed as if new negotiations need not
be entered into. At the site of the performance and under the conditions of
tradition, an artist continually experiences and even produces epistemic loss,
which the researcher in him or her attempts to suspend in ever new iterations.
As Rheinberger (2008) suggests, quoting Thomas Kuhn, artistic research is also
very much driven from behind, that is, driven forwards by the material and not
pulled into the future through intellectual projection or speculation. The artis-
tic researcher—perhaps more than his or her scientific counterpart—makes
the future with eyes cast back, like Benjamin’s angel of history, caught in a
storm that “irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned,
while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call
progress” (Benjamin [1968] 1999, 258).

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History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Circumstance: Robert Boyle’s Literary
Proteins in the Test Tube. Stanford: Stanford Technology.” Social Studies of Science 14 (4):
University Press. 481–520.

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Section II
The Role
of the Body:
Tacit and Creative
Dimensions
of Artistic
Experimentation
In devoting a strand of work to the role of the body within the larger topic of
artistic experimentation, ORCiM confronted one of the most problematic
aspects of artistic research in general: the potentially idiosyncratic and even
solipsistic accounts that might be presented by practitioners endeavouring to
describe their own ways of working, observing their own physical and mental
interfaces within the materials of that work, and trying to articulate this in
language that may feel genuine to them but can often raise questions for the
reader. The confrontation seemed worthwhile because here we are operat-
ing at that site of potential where musical artist and work interact. The verbal
shortcomings are symptomatic of this being the locus for the development of
tacit knowledge, in the sense of experience and insight which can somehow be
known but not articulated using language (since to do so would remove its tacit
qualities).
Much is made in the artistic research sphere of finding a way to access such
knowledge, but the attempts to do so are seldom satisfactory because of the
compromise at the core of the endeavour. So, what is the value of an emphasis
upon tacit and embodied knowledge as an adjunct to artistic experimentation?
And are there ways to avoid both the embarrassment of much first-person artis-
tic research reportage and the aporia of a knowledge that declines to articulate
what it is that it knows? First of all, in most cases, the body is the site of the cre-
ative musical act, mediated by a complex situational interface. Composition,
performance and improvisation all engage mind and body in forms of inter-
play, and these, at least, can be observed and commented upon. While, taken in
isolation, accounts of the singularity of individual experience might seem less
than convincing in research terms, a growing awareness of the shared scope of
concerns amongst many researchers begins to point up similar threads, refram-
ing the exemplary instances of music-making as bound together by specific,
unifying, but hidden points of commonality.
That musicians might share such experiences is hardly surprising; the model
of Western music training has particular practices that are spread across the
world, whether for good or ill. And the other thing they share is the central role
of their bodies as both locus and agency for their artistic creations. It is in and
through their bodies that they somehow make their translations back and forth
between the apprehension of theory and the realisation of music in real-time.
Within artistic experimentation, therefore, the role of the body must be bet-
ter understood. Moreover, this goes beyond a mechanistic view about how the
body might function within the context of making art. It also concerns how
the role of research itself, as it is internalised by the artist-researcher, alters
the embodied situation. This kind of understanding is also a concern within
the sciences; once again, the observations of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and those
who have responded to his work reveal laboratory situations in which, far from
somehow observing reactions within a test tube at a mental distance, research-
ers become part of the system of reaction. They turn out to have affective reac-
tions to what they apprehend and, in a wider sense, to become simply a part of
the entire experimental system that has been set up in the first place. Far from

124
offering carte blanche for artist-researchers to make extravagant claims, this
commonality of experience becomes a prompt for the development of more
precision, greater transparency and the evolution of more sophisticated and
specialist modes of dissemination.
With the development of such resources, those who are involved in making
art can also have a stronger voice in how the nature of that art is communicated
using language. This, in turn, opens the door to a reconsideration of the history
of the arts, of reception theory, and of other aspects of what might be called
the “music sciences.” Some of this work is already in progress, and is exempli-
fied by specific items within this Section. But the challenge remains for these
disciplines to become more “real” by considering the first-hand accounts of
those who perform and compose, to allow those accounts to sound out author-
itatively–where this is appropriate–and to consider that how the past might be
reframed in light of new, shared understanding.
The articles in this section share this focus upon the questions raised by the
notion of embodied knowledge, presenting first-hand accounts of artist-re-
searchers who are endeavouring to contextualise their own experiences of
practice to create useful approaches for others.

e M bo di M ent a nd g es tur e in p er Fo rMan c e : p rac tic e -b ased

p er s pec ti ves – c at h e r i n e l awS
The word “embodiment” has in recent years become commonplace in prac-
tice-based research, both in relation to music and more widely. It is some-
times used simply to draw attention to the role of the body in musical practice.
However, when considered in the light of recent developments in phenome-
nology, neuroscience, and body theory, a more specific and significant context
emerges, one that lies at the heart of artistic research and at the nexus between
doing and understanding. Catherine Laws argues for a determined focus upon
the idea of embodiment—not physicality, corporeality, or simply the body—in
order to avoid persistent Cartesian dichotomies and effect an integration of
the active and reflective sides of the artist and his or her practice. The artistic
research context prompts a questioning of the notion that the instrumental-
ist’s body is simply a vehicle for the realisation of cognitised musical intentions
and suggests a role for it that is both more integrated in this realisation and
more crucial in determining its nature.

o r der M atters : a t ho ugh t on hoW to p rac tise –

m i eK o K a n no
Tasks in the practice of musical performance may range from learning notes
and rhythms, through getting “up to speed” and getting gestures right, to
achieving the right effect, coordinating with other musicians, understanding
style, and performing from memory. The question about how to structure these
tasks into a sequence involves a further subset of questions such as how one
task conditions another, how a sequence of finite tasks determines their rela-

125
tive effectiveness within the same sequence, and how changes in the structure
of task-sequence influence the overall outcome. In her short article, Mieko
Kanno examines how order matters in violin playing and in learning to play
contemporary music. The ultimate aim is to understand the structural relation-
ship between tasks, which underpins all effective practice strategies in musical
performance.

a s s o c i ati o n -b ased e xperi M en tatio n as an a rtistic

r es ea r c h M eth o d – V alen tin G lo o r
We often speak of the meaning of methodology within a research field and
about the incompatibility of some principles of scientific methodology with
artistic research. This article challenges some of those incompatibilities
through the demonstration of a modified understanding of “experiment,”
introducing association-based experimentation as a method for conducting
artistic research. Although voluntary association is a broadly applied method in
art practice, questions remain about how we can distinguish association-based
experimentation in art practice from its application in artistic research. There
is not yet a generally accepted answer to this question within artistic research
discourse. Tröndle writes: “[Artists] ‘feel,’ when they are right, meaning they
have embodied their methodological know-how. Artistic research is embodied.”
Gloor argues that we must challenge this statement, because to accept it with-
out qualification would make artists synonymous with artistic researchers.

a s s o c i ati o n an d s elec tio n : t oWard s a n eW F lexibility in

F o rM a nd c on ten t oF th e l ied eraben d – V alen tin G lo o r
Treating the development of new Liederabend performance settings as an
“experimental system” as defined by Hans Jörg Rheinberger allows us to iden-
tify the creative process itself as an “epistemic thing.” This creative process is
dominated by association and selection, and could also be described in a more
general way as “thinking” in the broad sense of connecting intellectual, emo-
tional, and corporal (embodied) problem solving capacities. In this accompa-
nying text to his article “Association-based Experimentation,” Valentin Gloor
explores these possibilities.

i l p a lpi ta r del c o re —t h e h eart -b eat o F th e “F irst

o per a ” – a n Drew l awrence -K in G
This article reflects on a research, education, and performance project the
author undertook with students from the Royal Danish Academy of Music
and invited guests, a production of Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1607) in
the Christians Kirke, Copenhagen, in January 2011. The article explores the
research background leading to that project, and reflects on the results of the
experiment. Through the building of knowledge, experience, and expertise
that the project facilitated, Andrew Lawrence-King proposes such activities as

126
a means of arriving at the level where we can approach Historical Action in a
similar way to continuo realisation. He argues that the best of today’s continuo
players have so internalised the period rules of harmony, voice-leading, and
accompaniment aesthetics that they can improvise their realisations sponta-
neously and creatively, whilst remaining within the historical style boundaries.
He demonstrates that many familiar historical documents as well as newly-ex-
amined sources continue to reveal fresh insights in the light of our revised
understanding of rhythm and recitative. All this research feeds into contin-
uing practical experiment and professional productions, gradually shaping a
new understanding of how Renaissance theories of emotional communication
might be relevant to modern-day performance.

t ec h no -i ntui ti o n : e x per iM en ts W ith sound in th e

e nvi r o nM ent – Y ola n D e h arri S
The notion of techno-intuition emerged from Yolande Harris’s artistic research
into how one’s relationship to the environment is established and enhanced
through sound and listening. With the aid of sonic technologies and aware-
ness-enhancing practices, she demonstrates that we can re-experience envi-
ronments we know and access ones beyond our physiological abilities, such as
those underwater. These experiences are mediated both by our technologies
and by our interpretations—our techno-intuitions. Rather than considering
technology as antithetical to the environment, she argues the case for experi-
ments that blend the use of technological instruments with bodily experiences
of the environment, using sound to provoke a sense of direct involvement.
These experiments lead back to considering human scale, and our physiologi-
cal and emotional relationship to different environments through examples of
walking, swimming, and sailing. Such an embodied approach, driven by the use
of sound, challenges us physically and emotionally to expand beyond ourselves.

127
128
 Embodiment and
Gesture in Performance:
Practice-Based Perspectives

Catherine Laws
University of York; Orpheus Research Centre in Music

The word “embodiment” has in recent years become commonplace in prac-

tice-based research, in music and beyond. It is sometimes used simply to refer
attention to the role of the body in musical practice. However, considered in the
light of recent developments in phenomenology, neuroscience, and body the-
ory, a more specific and significant context emerges, one that lies at the heart of
artistic research, at the nexus between doing and understanding. Below, I argue
for a determined focus on embodiment—not physicality, corporeality or sim-
ply the body—in order to avoid persistent Cartesian tendencies. The artistic
research context prompts a questioning of the notion that the instrumental-
ist’s body is a vehicle for the realisation of cognitised musical intentions.
As Deniz Peters (2011) points out, despite the growing discourse on the phe-
nomenology of music, it is still the case that “sensual qualities are often asso-
ciated with ‘the body,’ whereas intellectual qualities with ‘the mind,’ and that,
respectively, research appears to often fall into two categories: bodily aspects
of musical experience, such as ‘chills,’ are investigated as physical phenom-
ena, empirically; mental aspects (such as semantics, musical ‘understanding’
and imagination) are more likely to be topics of theoretical analysis, hermeneu-
tics, and philosophical argument.” However, as Mine Do�gantan-Dack (2011, 244)
comments, the emergence of performance studies in its own right in music has
actually coincided with challenges to Cartesian dualism from both phenome-
nology and, more recently, particular discoveries in neuroscience.
Numerous studies have now confirmed that even non-experts demonstrate
quite detailed associations of musical sound and corresponding sound-produc-
ing gestures (Godøy 2011, 68). This is one aspect of the neuroscientific devel-
opments that have, in the last two decades in particular, led to deeper exami-
nation of the relationship between reasoning and the emotions, and especially
between mind and body. As Antonio Damasio (1994) writes, it is now generally
accepted that “the reasoning system evolved as an extension of the automatic
emotional system, with emotion playing diverse roles in the reasoning process”
(xvii); and (more interestingly for our context) “the body, as represented in the

129
 Catherine Laws

brain, may constitute the indispensable frame of reference for the neural processes
that we experience as the mind; that our very organism rather than some abso-
lute external reality is used as the ground reference for the constructions we
make of the world around us and for the construction of the ever-present sense
of subjectivity that is part and parcel of our experiences; that our most refined
thoughts and best actions, our greatest joys and deepest sorrows, use the body
as a yardstick” (xxvi). Effectively this is a neuroscientific mapping of what cer-
tain phenomenologists, especially Merleau-Ponty, had already proposed, sup-
porting the notion of the phenomenological lived body as entwined with men-
tal representations, not simply informing them.
There is, now, plenty of evidence in support of Liberman and Mattingly’s
motor theory of perception; over thirty years ago, this theory set out the idea
that the perception of sound is linked to simulation in the brain of the move-
ments we assume to have produced the sound (Godøy 2011, 70). The supple-
mentary motor area of the brain has subsequently become a particular focus
of scientific study, since it is active in perception as well as action: as Albrecht
Schneider (2010, 83) puts it: “there is a mutual correspondence between per-
ception and action for which the supplementary motor area might provide the
neural substrate.” Some sound-motor couplings appear to be “hard-wired”—
there are direct neurophysiological couplings in the brain—but it seems we
have great capacity for learning these (Godøy 2011, 70).
As Rolf Inge Godøy (2010, 108) discusses, from this has developed an impor-
tant aspect of embodied cognition, focusing on the spontaneous tendency to
imitate mentally the movements we see others making and those we assume
others to be making if we can’t see them (such as when listening to a record-
ing). This basic idea has been elaborated by Arnie Cox in particular (2001, 2006,
2011). Cox’s concern is to understand musical affect, and his argument, rooted
in recent scientific discovery and theories of perception, is that emotional
states are often connected to muscular states, with muscular states being influ-
enced by mimetic participation with the perceived sound. Cox argues that lis-
teners undertake forms of mimetic participation, whether obviously (for exam-
ple, through foot-tapping), or through less obvious physical movements or
sub-vocalisation of instrumental melodies. He contends that we “understand
human movement and human-made sounds in terms of our own experience
of making the same or similar movements and sounds,” and that “this process
of comparison involves overt and covert imitation of the source and visual and
auditory information” (Cox 2001, 196).
This might be more obvious for musicians—someone who plays the piano
may experience stronger and more specific forms of mimesis when watching or
listening to a pianist, compared with someone with no experience of the motor
actions involved in piano playing—but is not exclusive to direct physical expe-
rience: mimetic participation is often the result of a “basic feeling of exertion
that does not belong to a single mode of physical experience” (Cox 2001, 204).
Additionally, this argument now seems to be supported by recent research into
the functioning of mirror neurons (Cox 2011).

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 Embodiment and Gesture in Performance

Partly in relation to this research, a number of those studying musical ges-

ture now refer to the idea of body-image schema: the idea that we make sense
of musical phenomena by metaphorically mapping onto music the concepts
derived from bodily experience of the physical world. All this research seems
to underline what most musical performers know—that our intellectual and
affective responses to music are not separate from our physical activities.
Nor does the physical experience simply provide information that feeds into
a higher mental representation of musical ideas. Instead, as Arnold Berleant
(2004, 86) says, “In embodiment meanings are experienced rather than cog-
nized.” To again quote Peters (2011), “music becomes meaningful experience
via bodily involvement (not affecting the latter as a consequence of cognitive
acts, but being created by it, hence turning into cognitive acts).”
It is this intertwining of lived bodily experience and mental representation
that is meant by embodiment; not simply paying attention to the body; not
a matter (in the performance context) of an ability to physicalise cognitised
musical intentions. In this respect embodiment in music performance is only
tangentially concerned with matters such as efficient technique or ergonom-
ics; only so much as these things feed into our experiencing of the music. It is
my contention that this intertwining cannot be fully understood without the
perspective of the musician, without considering the subjective experiencing
of embodiment in action. Artistic research might, therefore, offer a way to help
us to “get to grips” with embodiment (not just with the body); to reiterate, we
need to find ways to problematise the notion that the instrumentalist’s body is a
vehicle for the realisation of cognitised musical intentions—this is our concern.

g es tur e
Elaborating the concept of embodiment helps to contextualise another key
term in this field: gesture. This is, of course, a word with a complex history and
usage. It appears in a range of fields (linguistics, sociology, musicology, robot-
ics, human-computer interaction) used somewhat differently, and in the field
of music can be used to reference purely sonic objects with certain characteris-
tics, purely physical phenomena (i.e., a particular movement of a musician), or
an entity that combines the physical and sonic.
However, in the field of gesture studies the important feature is the combi-
nation of extension and intention (Leman and Godøy 2010, 5); here a gesture
is not simply any physical movement, but one that carries intentional meaning
and expression. Robert Hatten (2006, 1) puts it succinctly: human gesture is
“any energetic shaping through time that may be interpreted as significant.”
Thus musical gesture is not simply concerned with the physical production of
sound, but with the relationship between musical intention and physical exten-
sion—how one informs and transforms the other. Put simply, gesture blurs the
distinction between movement and meaning (Leman and Godøy 2010, 5–10);
gesture is not a physical phenomenon, but an embodied one.

131
 Catherine Laws

As Anthony Gritten and Elaine King (2011b) write, gesture, then, operates
holistically and multi-modally, with overlaps between musical and other ges-
tures. Gestures are immediate in perception and form, and interaction is an
innate component of gesture-making. Moreover, “Not only is gesture tied up
in issues of agency and intention in musical practice, and not only is it figured
within the concept of creativity . . . but it is the site and vehicle for a crucial flow
of energy between domains and, as such, the entropic loop-hole of music-mak-
ing—that event through which, and at which point, and by means of which
music happens” (ibid., 2). This is a big claim, but one that is shared by Rolf Inge
Godøy, Marc Leman, and others in this field: that essentially there is no music
without gesture, or even: music is gesture.
Importantly, this confirms that gesture is deeply entwined in questions of
subjectivity and expression in music, and in the nature of interactions between
composers and performers, as well as performers and other performers.

M eth o do lo gic al c o n c ern s

The above is intended to consolidate the significance of embodiment and

gesture to the understanding of music, particularly when working from the
musician’s perspective. One issue that arises from this is the relevance of musi-
co-scientific studies of musician’s gestures. In recent years there has been a
proliferation of research in this field, facilitated by developments in video and
motion capture technology. There are now quite a number of studies of per-
formers’ gestures, many focusing on pianists. Studies such as that of Simone
Dalla Bella and Caroline Palmer on anticipatory motor action (2004), L. H.
Shaffer on timing (1984), and especially Jane Davidson on the physical manifes-
tation of expression (particularly 1994, 2005, 2007, 2009), are extremely inter-
esting, revealing aspects of performers’ gestural repertories and also confirm-
ing the extent to which the visual influences our perception of everything from
musical form to judgments about a performer’s abilities. Davidson’s (1994,
2005, 2007) studies of piano playing are particularly useful; she argues that per-
formers’ physical gestures form part of a nonverbal system of representation
comparable with our development of thoughts as part of a verbal representa-
tional system of communication.
However, there are limitations to these approaches. As is stressed above,
when we consider gesture as a carrier of musical meaning and expression it
has to have two components: extension (the movement of the body in space)
and intention (what we imagine) (Leman and Godøy 2010, 5). In many of these
recent studies of the performing body, intention is reconstructed, considered
outside of the act in both space and time. Moreover, a complex embodied process
is split into bodily and mental components. The body is the object of study
examined empirically: we can measure extension, movement in space, by look-
ing at it, using video and motion capture technology. Intention, of course, is
not measurable. It has to be constructed, inferred, construed, interpreted. In these
studies it is usually derived from two things: an idea of the expressive content of
the piece, based on the score (i.e., an account of what the expressive content of

132
 Embodiment and Gesture in Performance

the performance “should” be), and the comments of the performer, verbalised
and, of course, communicated before or after the act itself: what did I hope to
do, what do I think I communicated.
This process of reading back from gesture to score assumes that the embodied
aspects of musical performance are formed entirely in response to that score,
or understandings derived from it, and that one can therefore trace a one-on-
one connection between the two, explaining the physical gesture in terms of
attributes of the piece as encoded in the notation. However, the score itself
is a purely intentional object. Moreover, while for many musicians, and most
classical musicians, the score is an important starting point, mapping gesture
primarily in relation to features of this graphic representation avoids the trick-
ier question of how our long-term physical engagement with musical sound in
general, and with the specifics of an instrument in particular, inform our musi-
cal intentions. It also ignores that the embodied experience of the music might
change or provide different versions, at different times, of the sense of musical
shape, form, or expression. Put simply, in playing music we feel it in different
ways, and this is part of our musical representation as much as any score-based
reading of musical features.
In these studies, asking the performer to explain their musical intentions is
presumably meant to balance out the reliance on score-based analytical map-
pings. However, from the perspective of the performer, intention is complex. It
is constantly constructed and reconstructed, before the performance, through
practice, but also during the performance, in relation to what really happens,
and it is then reconstructed afterwards when we try to work out for ourselves
what happened. Moreover, this dynamic intentionality operates at different
levels and in different modes; we think of it, and represent it to ourselves and
others in different ways at different times, but it also often takes place with-
out apparent explicit conceptualisation, through apparently instantaneous
embodied actions and reactions. Furthermore, the instrument is not purely a
means of self-expression, but as Kathryn Woodard (2008, 128–31) writes, a tech-
nology that shapes the self; the body is disciplined, not an unfettered tool of
expression. And beyond this, of course, intention is perceived differently by
performer and audience, imaginatively produced through what Alva Noë calls
“embodied enaction” (2002). As a result, a singular, post facto account along
the lines of “what I intended musically” is insufficient and simplistic.
For example, Davidson’s (1994, 2005, 2007) studies of pianists (initially in the
early-mid 1990s, but later revisited and extended) form an attempt to differ-
entiate between the movements necessary to produce the sounds of a piece
and those “additional” movements bound up with expressivity. Davidson asked
pianists to play the same piece but to vary the expressive intentions, playing
in three different ways: “without expression,” with “normal” expressive con-
tent, and with exaggerated expression. The performances were filmed by video
cameras, with a video position analyser tracking movements by following
markers placed on the pianist’s face, shoulder, and hands. As one might expect,
Davidson found little difference in the hand movements, presumably due to
the technical demands of playing the notes, but considerable difference in the

133
 Catherine Laws

action of the upper torso and head. Here—again as one might expect—the dif-
ferences were not so much in the kind of movements, but in the degree of move-
ment, the performance of “exaggerated expression” not surprisingly providing
the biggest gestures.
This offers empirical evidence for the association between bodily movement
and expressivity in musical performance. However, transferring the obser-
vations from the broader, more general level to more detailed relationships
between sound and movement is problematic. At this point, the research
needs to—but currently does not—take account of the complex intertwining
of individual and enculturated aspects of piano playing, especially the intersec-
tion between the various traditions of bodily expression at the instrument and
performers’ recourse to analysis of form and structure in their developing of
expressive intentions. The approach makes assumptions about what is individ-
ually regarded as “normal” or “exaggerated,” and at a more detailed level has to
map movements to score-based analysis. Perhaps more significantly, though,
it assumes that the self and the body form an uncontested unit; that there is
an obvious, one-to-one mapping between the cognitised idea of “normal” or
“exaggerated” expression and the pianistic manifestation of expression, and
that the body simply realises these concepts, as if responding to or obeying
instructions. But the body is not such a naturalised, purely responsive unit.
Aside from the complexities of mind-body relationships I have discussed (i.e.,
the role of embodied experience in forming ideas), we have to take into account
that the body is not a naturalised entity that acts purely at the will of the mind.
The performing body is modified through years of practice, through discipline
in relation to the instrument, through the nature of one’s training, by other
(non-musical) embodied experience, by social and cultural experience, and by
the specific demands of repertoire. To say it again: the body is not simply a vehi-
cle for realising cognitised intentions.
In this respect, just when most music theorists seem to have laid to rest the
old linear, communicative model of the composer sending a message through
a performer to a receiving, decoding audience, a similar intentional fallacy
has effectively been reconstructed in many studies of musical gesture. Gritten
seems to be one of the only people to comment on this, noting that gestures are
usually conceived anthropomorphically in organicist terms, and that this is yet
one more reflection of our desire to “possess music,” as he puts it, to get a grip
on what it’s doing (Gritten 2006: 104–25).
Do�gantan-Dack (2011, 246) also acknowledges this limitation in her explora-
tion of a phenomenological approach to piano touch. She notes the prevalent
“performer as lab rat” tendency identified by John Rink (2004, 39), wherein
performance and the performer are the focus of study but the documentation
is from the perspective of the listener-researcher. Do�gantan-Dack (2011, 246)
links this to what she sees as the persistent dominance of the work concept in
music, commenting: “While it is certainly true that there has been an unprec-
edented interest in studying musical performance over the last two decades,
it is questionable whether the deep-rooted ontological—and epistemolog-
ical—primacy of the score and of abstract musical relationships in Western

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 Embodiment and Gesture in Performance

musical thought has indeed given way to a reconceptualization of music as

performance.” Moreover, “the continuing dominance of the score is also evi-
dent in expressive performance studies, where the variations in tempo, and
dynamics observed in a performance are conceptualized to a large extent as
functions of abstract musical structures, reinforcing a work-centred ideology
and rendering the performer’s role derivative of the score” (ibid.). In this sense
gesture becomes an aspect of the realisation of the work, mapped onto mental
representations. However, from my discussion of embodiment and the com-
plexities of gesture this is clearly problematic, derivative, and one-dimensional.
Davidson’s studies, for example, have been very important in demonstrat-
ing that performers use music to communicate information about structural
features of music and expressive intentions (to both ensemble members and
audiences). However, this leaves open the more intricate issues of how such
representations are formed, the radical ambiguity, uncertainty, and change-
ability of gestural intention, and the limitations of the implied structures of
communication. As Do�gantan-Dack (ibid., 259) says, we neglect “how the exe-
cution of various gestures actually makes the performer feel—both physically
and affectively”; and hence how those experiences and feelings inform the
understanding of the music and subsequent performances. Gesture might in
some senses operate in relation to a score, or any other atemporal mapping
or conception of a piece of music, but gesture is action and, as Cox (2006, 45)
says, “our perception and understanding of gestures involves understanding
the physicality involved in their production”; gesture cannot be fully encoded
by notation, and neither a performer nor a listener simply maps gestures back
onto a work concept as part of a linear process of communication.
Instead, then, artistic research in this area might seek others ways to explore
and represent the processes of embodiment at work in musical performance
and their manifestation in gestural form.

“s o undi ng g es tur e , e nac ted s o u n d s ”

One example of a practice-based project designed to explore the above issues
is “Sounding Gestures, Enacted Sounds,” undertaken by myself (as a pianist)
in collaboration with composer William Brooks and percussionist Damien
Harron. There is not room to discuss this project in detail; instead, I offer a
brief exposition of the key concerns, in relation to the issues outlined above.
For us, the problem has been how, as a pianist and a percussionist, and par-
ticularly ones involved in contemporary music and music theatre, we can have a
better understanding of our physical relationship with the instruments and the
complexities of expression. Clearly the growing body of work on gesture is rele-
vant and in many respects revealing. And likewise, we can use video and motion
capture, looking back at ourselves after the fact and trying to relate this to what
was going on, attempting to recapture, re-imagine our embodied experience in
relation to what is viewed on the two-dimensional screen.
However, this project took a different tack. From the above it should be clear
why a practice-based perspective seemed not only interesting but also nec-

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 Catherine Laws

essary; there had to be an attempt to avoid the separation of movement and

intention, however complex the formation and manifestation of intention. In
a practice-led approach the complexities of the body come to the fore: there
is no divorcing of subject and object. The veneer of objectivity has to be dis-
carded. Of course the subjective is no less problematic; indeed, as Leman
(2010, 149) argues, the complexity of gesture is perhaps best explored through
a combination of first-, second-, and third-person approaches. Nevertheless,
in a practice-based approach, with musicians also researchers, one confronts
directly the impossibility of being present to oneself; the questions feed from
and through the experience of practice, and one cannot avoid that issues of
agency and subjectivity are bound up with those of gesture.
As a pianist, I cannot pretend to myself that I am at every level fully aware of
my physical activities in performing, any more than I am aware, in a fully pres-
ent sense that can be extrapolated in words, of my felt, subjective understand-
ing of the music and my intentions in playing it. But the reason for this is pre-
cisely the entwining of the corporeal with the various modes of representation:
the very nature of embodiment. The question, then, was not how to produce a
precise account of the mappings between sound and gesture, but rather to find
ways of revealing the complexities of those relationships and their significance
in the production of musical meaning.
The attempt was to find both greater awareness and to enrich the field of
creative possibilities by exploring the body as a site of imaginative production.
The project involved an experimental process of examining, exchanging, and
reconstructing vocabularies of gesture, to make strange and disjointed what
ordinarily feels (even if it is not) natural (after years of training and experience),
to disrupt the habitual, as if to try to catch the performing body-subject in the
act of looking at itself.
Naomi Cumming considers the ways in which the production of (usually
beautiful) tone through a well-balanced physical adjustment to the instrument
is central to creating the impression of a musical personality; it is linked to the
idea of a performer’s “voice,” or (in Cumming’s terms) a “sonic self ” (Cumming
2000, 23). For the performer there is an “experiential continuity” between tone
colour and gesture (Do�gantan-Dack 2011, 250). Certainly, for me, sound pro-
duction is at the heart of piano playing; my sense of myself as a performer with
“something to say” is deeply bound to this embodied experience. So one of the
questions in my mind was how much, and how, this would be disrupted by the
disjointing process; how much of my sense of my performing self at the piano
is bound up with an intricate embodied understanding? And if the basis of that
understanding is altered, displaced, what happens?
Our project started with detailed practical exploration of the nature of our
gestures at our instruments. Initially, Damien chose to use a vibraphone, placed
alongside the piano, and we worked by comparing the different ways in which
various parts of our bodies are involved in producing similar sonic gestures:
chordal attacks or arpeggiated lines, for example. Damien played sometimes
with sticks, sometimes with fingers, so as to consider how moving from one
to the other affected the similarities and differences in other aspects of our

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 Embodiment and Gesture in Performance

gestural characteristics (in the use of wrists, arms, shoulders, and overall body
position). At times we used pedals, again comparing the impact of this change
upon our physical relationships to the instruments. We also experimented with
reaching between keyboard and strings on the piano, comparing this with the
use of different regions of the vibraphone. Starting from very simple gestural
units, we devised a range of experiments to extend the comparative process,
producing a series of exercises designed to expose to ourselves the similarities
and differences in our gestural vocabularies. Finally, this embodied knowledge
was transformed through extension and disruption: a deliberate modification
(or “disjointing”) of our gestural vocabularies for creative purpose, deployed in
the composition that resulted.
The comparisons took a variety of forms: simple observation of each other,
copying and discussing what we saw and felt; third party observation and com-
mentary upon the two of us playing together; use of video playback. Finally,
a stage of the research process involved sonifying our gestures. We worked at
the Aesthetic Lab of the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics at the
Kunstuniversität in Graz, attaching sensors to our arms and wrists to map our
movements using an infrared motion tracking system. By linking relatively
simple sonifications to the movements in space, with sliding pitch or timbral
changes, we perceived our gestures differently, both in themselves and com-
paratively. The process allows movement in space to be felt as a change in
sound, giving real-time (if relatively crude) feedback on the similarities of or
differences between movements—qualities one cannot perceive of one’s own
body in the moment of enaction (nor, often, by means of retrospective view-
ing of video footage on a 2-D screen). The Aesthetic Lab set-up also allowed
for immediate visualisation of the movements on a large screen, abstracted as
points in space across a grid.
Throughout this process various mappings, sketches, and observations
evolved. Composer William Brooks observed the experiments and devised
various exercises of his own. He then used the experience as the basis for
developing a composition in which gesture formed the starting point. The
idea was that sound would be consequent upon composed gestures—rather
than gesture being necessary for or consequent upon sound—with the piece
developing from an understanding of the specific correlations and divergences
between gestural and sounding content. For this, Brooks devised a particular
layout of percussion instruments that defines a physical space analogous to
the piano keyboard, allowing the player to choose the individual instruments
but designating their number, the space they should fill, and certain resonant
properties.

Overall, the process involved examining composition as choreography, but

a choreography in which the intimate relation between the physical and the
sonic was embedded. The experiments led to a new piece of creative work that
explores and exploits these findings. The result, in addition to critical reflec-
tions on the process, was a new composition, Disjointed, and a film of that work.

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 Catherine Laws

Fundamentally, the process and the piece ask:

What kind of meanings do our gestures afford?

What happens when we dislocate the usual conjunctions of music and meaning;
do the affordances change?

Taken as a whole, the process and the piece explore the kinds of meanings that
our gestures afford, as well as questioning what happens to these affordances
when we dislocate the usual conjunctions of music and meaning.

References
Berleant, Arnold. 2004. Re-thinking Aesthetics: University Press.
Rogue Essays on Aesthetics and the Arts. ———. 2007. “Qualitative Insights into the
Aldershot: Ashgate. Use of Expressive Bodily Movement in
Cox, Arnie. 2001. “The Mimetic Hypothesis Solo Piano Performance: A Case Study
and Embodied Musical Meaning.” Musica Approach.” Psychology of Music 35 (3):
Scientiae, 5 (2): 195–209. 381–401.
———. 2006. “Hearing, Feeling, Grasping ———. 2009. “Movement and
Gestures.” In Gritton and King 2006, Collaboration in Musical Performance.”
45–60. In The Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology,
———. 2011. “Embodying Music: Principles edited by Susan Hallam, Ian Cross, and
of the Mimetic Hypothesis.” Music Michael Thaut, 364–76. Oxford: Oxford
Theory Online 17 (2). Accessed 18 August University Press.
2011. http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/ Do�gantan-Dack, Mine. 2011. “In the
mto.11.17.2/mto.11.17.2.cox .html. Beginning was Gesture: Piano Touch and
Cumming, Naomi. 2000. The Sonic Self: an Introduction to a Phenomenology
Musical Subjectivity and Signification. of the Performing Body.” In Gritten and
Bloomington: Indiana University Press. King 2011a, 243–66.
Dalla Bella, Simone, and Caroline Palmer. Godøy, Rolf Inge. 2010. “Gestural
2004. “Tempo and Dynamics in Piano Affordances of Musical Sound.” In Godøy
Performance: The Role of Movement and Leman 2010, 103–25.
and Amplitude.” 8th International ———. 2011. “Coarticulated Gestural-Sonic
Conference on Music Perception and Objects in Music.” In Gritten and King
Cognition. Accessed 22 April 2011. http:// 2011a, 67–82.
www.icmpc8.umn.edu/proceedings/ Godøy, Rolf Inge, and Marc Leman, eds.
ICMPC8/PDF /AUTHOR/MP040166. 2010. Musical Gestures: Sound, Movement,
PDF. and Meaning. New York: Routledge.
Damasio, Antonio. 1994. Descartes’ Error: Gritten, Anthony. 2006. “Drift.” In Gritten
Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. and King 2006, 104–25.
London: Papermac. Gritten, Anthony, and Elaine King, eds.
Davidson, Jane W. 1994. “What Type 2006. Music and Gesture. Aldershot:
of Information is Conveyed in the Ashgate.
Body Movements of Solo Musician ———, eds. 2011a. New Perspectives on Music
Performers?” Journal of Human Movement and Gesture. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Studies 6: 279–301. ———. 2011b. Introduction to Gritten and
———. 2005. “Bodily Communication King 2011a, 1–10.
in Musical Performance.” In Musical Hatten, Robert S. 2006. “A Theory of Musical
Communication, edited by Dorothy Gesture and its Application to Beethoven
Miell, Raymond Macdonald, and David and Schubert.” In Gritten and King 2006,
J. Hargreaves, 215–37. Oxford: Oxford 1–23.

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 Embodiment and Gesture in Performance

Leman, Marc. 2010. “Music, Gesture, and the Rink, John. 2004. “The State of Play in
Formation of Embodied Meaning.” In Performance Studies.” In The Music
Godøy and Leman 2010, 126–53. Practitioner: Research for the Music Performer,
Leman, Marc, and Rolf Inge Godøy. 2010. Teacher and Listener, edited by Jane
“Why Study Musical Gestures?” In Godøy Davidson, 37–51. Aldershot: Ashgate.
and Leman 2010, 3–11. Schneider, Albrecht. 2010. “Music and
Noë, Alva. 2002. “Art as Cognition: Art Gesture: A Historical Introduction and
as Enaction.” Interdisciplines. Accessed Survey of Earlier Research.” In Godøy and
28 September 2010. http://www. Leman 2010, 69–100.
interdisciplines.org/medias/confs/ Shaffer, L. H. 1984. “Timing in Solo and Duet
archives/archive_1.pdf. Piano Performances.” Quarterly Journal of
Peters, Deniz. 2011. “Embodied Generative Experimental Psychology 36A (4): 577–95.
Music: Musicological and philosophical Woodard, Kathryn. 2008. “The Pianist’s Body
ambition.” Kunst Universität Graz. at Work: Mediating Sound and Meaning
Accessed 15 April. http://egm.kug.ac.at/ in Frederic Rzewski’s Winnsboro Cotton
index.php?id=10300. Mill Blues.” In Sonic Mediations: Body, Sound,
Technology, edited by Carolyn Birdsall
and Anthony Enns, 127–39. Newcastle:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

139
 Order Matters
A Thought on How to Practise

Mieko Kanno
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

h oW o r der M atters

The literature on how to play music is rich in quantity and variety. It ranges from
do-it-yourself websites on how to play the guitar in ten easy steps to academic
papers on how to enhance performance from a psychological perspective. Each
teacher, author, or commentator offers a practice strategy. In any walk of life,
strategies address two principal questions: what to do and how to do it in order
to achieve an aim. The “what” question determines tasks to be undertaken and
the “how” question explains the method with which those tasks are carried out.
While the “what” question relates more significantly to the outcome, the “how”
question is equally indispensable if the tasks are to be carried out. I wish to take
a moment to consider the “how” question in relation to musical performance,
that is, the method by which musicians make music.1
Tasks in the practice of musical performance may range from learning notes
and rhythms, getting “up to speed,” and getting gestures right, to achieving
the right effect, coordinating with other musicians, understanding style, and
performing from memory. The question about how to structure these tasks
into a sequence involves a further subset of questions such as how one task
conditions another, how a sequence of finite tasks determines their relative
effectiveness within the same sequence, and how changes in the structure of
task-sequence influence the overall outcome. While there are pedagogical rea-
sons to follow a certain well-established sequence of tasks, one observes that
(1) there is considerable flexibility in the execution of the sequence, (2) there
is variety to the sequence structure—a sequence may possess a tree-like form
(where each answer to a question leads to a different question) or consist of cir-
cles (where the same questions are answered but in a different order)—and (3)
changes in the order of task-sequence often provide a “breakthrough” in learn-
ing to perform music. The last point refers to the practice where musicians
search for solutions not only through repeated practice but also by changing an

1 Video illustrations relevant to this article may be found online at http://www.orpheusinstituut.be/

anthology/repository

141
 Mieko Kanno

approach—that is, by reordering priorities and tasks. In this short article I wish
to examine how order matters in violin playing and in learning to play contem-
porary music. The ultimate aim of my inquiry is to understand the structural
relationship between tasks, which underpins all effective practice strategies in
musical performance.
The range of tasks involved in the performance of contemporary music can
vary depending on the composition, though, in my experience, the majority of
these tasks are within the bounds of general musicianship of any trained musi-
cian. However, there are some new techniques—often described as extended
techniques—that affect the standard routine task-sequence. Two examples
may suffice to explain this. First, consider over-pressure in the bow: while
many string players regard this as part of right-hand technique, which includes
dynamics, its most noticeable influence is on the domain of pitch and timbre;
this is the case in the music of Helmut Oehring. Second, consider scordatura:
the two main approaches to this technique are either to detune first and then
learn the piece with the instrument detuned, or to learn the piece in the stand-
ard tuning and detune later to “add an effect.” Despite the significance of these
new techniques on the topic, to address fundamental issues about task-se-
quences in the practice of music this article examines the reordering of basic
tasks such as learning notes and rhythms in contemporary music.

o r der M atte rs every Wh ere

In everyday life the importance of procedural order is widely acknowledged

and attracts interest. An arithmetic operation may explain the question most
clearly. We have an understanding that the order in which we perform different
operations leads to different results. For example 2 + (3 × 4) = 14 is different
from (2 + 3) × 4 = 20. In this case the answers differ depending on which of
the two operations is performed first. Multiplication is a dominant operator—
doing multiplication first is a rule—so brackets are necessary to distinguish the
latter expression from the former. Decisions about the sequence of actions can
also be found in cooking recipes, such as in the well-known example of how to
mix eggs, sugar, and butter in baking. Eggs and sugar are mixed first and melted
butter added last in madeleine; sugar and butter first and then eggs in Victoria
sponge; sugar and butter first, egg yoke next, and egg white last—after flour—
for a Swiss roll dough. The resulting differences are significant enough that
different dough types lead to different cakes. Binary code in computing pro-
vides another example: 0011, 0101, 0110, 1001, 1010, and 1100 are different codes
despite each having the same number of zeros and ones. Each code sequence
possesses distinct, specific data-transporting connection by means of different
orders.
Musical notation resembles a set of ingredients with a description of—but
without a recipe for—a dish. But while following recipes is relatively easy, con-
structing them is much harder. There are many, many ways in which musicians
transform notated music into performance, but this process does not simply
depend on personal taste or artistic license. Musicians vary their approach to

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notation according to performance context. For example, they prioritise shapes

(rather than details) in sight-reading, pay more attention to detail (rather than
overall effect on listeners) in recording, and emphasise the character and role
of the material notated (over specific qualities in the notation) in ensemble
performance. We also observe a similar shift of approach in the manner musi-
cians vary their practice according to the repertoire, from early music through
Romantic to contemporary. To identify stylistic features of the music is one of
the first steps musicians take in learning a piece of music. A passage of arpeg-
giated semiquavers in Vivaldi may draw attention to the harmonic rhythm that
is to be emphasised; that same passage in Bruckner may represent a colour
wash that needs to become part of a smooth, blended ensemble texture; in
Birtwistle it may be a timbral backdrop where the character of the register is to
be brought out. In each case the understanding of the musical function of the
passage determines the way in which musicians learn the passage.
Contemporary music enjoys a wide range of styles, which raises questions
about its performance practice. Do musicians vary their practice according to
each style, genre, or context? What distinguishes each practice? Does it come
with a distinct task-sequence? Does a task-sequence relate to a compositional
method? Some techniques (such as finger slapping and “white-noise” bowing
strokes on stringed instruments) were created in the search for new musical
sounds; compositions that feature these techniques—such as those by Helmut
Lachenmann and Gérard Pesson—oblige the performer to follow a radically
different task-sequence. Given the variety of new techniques that are becom-
ing common in contemporary music, assessing the sequence in which musi-
cians process tasks may become essential in learning new works.
As for violin playing, most schools start by instructing how to stand and hold
a violin, how to put a bow across the string, and how to finger the left hand.
The last part, the left hand training, then develops into a preoccupation: many
exercise books have been produced on playing scales and all possible permu-
tations of left-hand fingering. These left-hand exercises start with fingering on
one string and develop into fingering on all four strings across the instrument.
String crossing is therefore learned in conjunction with the crossing of the
left-hand fingers to ensure coordination between the two hands. One study,
however, considers the separation of the two hands strategically. Michelangelo
Abbado’s Come studiare i Capricci di Paganini [How to study Paganini’s Caprices]
(1973) structures practising in three stages: first the left hand in easy rhythms,
second the right hand with open strings, and then both hands together. After
dividing a phrase into segments Abbado’s methodology proceeds as follows: (1)
do and repeat the left hand exercises for each segment until satisfactory, then
proceed to the next in the same manner until all the segments are practised
for the left hand, (2) do and repeat the right hand exercises for the same seg-
ments, and (3) put both hands together and practise each phrase as it appears
in Paganini’s score. In other words, the second stage is the added section to
the standard practice routine and the strategic novelty of Abbado’s approach.
The note-first preoccupation of violinists is in striking contrast to, for
instance, the practice of percussionists, who learn gestures first and then add

143
 Mieko Kanno

notes. In an attempt to experiment with an alternative approach, I separated

left-hand learning from right-hand learning in preparing my performance of
Salvatore Sciarrino’s Per Mattia (1975) (audio-video files A, B, and C). Audio-
video file A is the “play-through” version corresponding to the first stage of
Abbado’s methodology, where the left hand pitches are executed correctly but
without any right hand techniques; audio-video file B is the second stage equiv-
alent where the right-hand techniques are executed without the left hand—the
neck of the instrument is covered with a cloth to prevent open strings from
ringing; audio-video file C shows the last stage where the two hands are com-
bined together in a performance. The resulting performance consists of the
two parts, A and B, though in this instance it is easier to see the contribution of
right-hand techniques than it is those of the left hand. This is representative of
the importance of right-hand techniques in Sciarrino’s violin music, or, more
precisely, of the decisive influence of the parameters controlled by the right
hand (envelope, pressure, and dynamics) on the musical character of the piece.
This experiment is a simple example of the difference that order makes: the
combination of left-hand notes with right-hand techniques is not the same as
right-hand techniques with left-hand notes. Learning the right hand first and
the left hand second produces the effect heard in the resultant performance.
Learning the left hand first and the right hand second leads to having to “read-
just” the left hand at a subsequent stage. This is because the learning process is
algorithmic: the first task conditions the ground for the second task. Had this
music placed more emphasis on the pitch domain—as is normal in most clas-
sical music—learning the left hand first would have led directly to the desired
effect. But what is important in this musical context is the envelope and tim-
bre rather than the notes—making every note speak is less important and so
learning the right hand first makes the task-sequence simpler. Knowing the
difference the task-sequence makes is critical: it is information that goes hand
in hand with the aesthetics of this music. It constitutes an integral part of the
performance practice.

W hy o r der Matters

In proposing that learning right-hand techniques first simplifies the task-se-

quence in the Sciarrino piece, I wish to emphasise that this experiment is a cre-
ative undertaking; I do not imply it is the “best” or most appropriate approach.
After all, the simple way is often convenient but not always best. Rather, in con-
structing an alternative procedure, I strive to articulate the critical function of
internal logic in the act of music-making as research. The knowledge of the
critical function of right-hand techniques in Sciarrino’s violin music provides
me with a means to orientate my learning process around these techniques:
to prioritise the dynamic envelope and timbral quality, and map out the effec-
tiveness of all other articulations as secondary. Per Mattia does not use any new
technique. I have used Sciarrino’s piece to examine how reordering tasks may
influence an outcome, rather than as an example of how a new technique may
influence an existing sequence of tasks (and thus the outcome). Implicit to

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 Order Matters

this approach is the view that performance is a combinatorial art the quality
of which depends on the manner of assembling finite information and skills.
Hence I seek elegant and effective solutions from resources within the practice
by finding new combinations and sequences, rather than aiming to bolster the
practice by introducing something external to it. This view also draws attention
to the need regularly to reconfigure musicians’ skills. Unlearning is one such
process and is a significant part of the larger learning process in a performer’s
practice: unlearning bad habits, unlearning a practice of one tradition or genre
in order to learn another, and unlearning just enough to enable effective learn-
ing. Unlearning has a particular importance in the performance of contempo-
rary music because of the need to acquire new means for new expression. Much
is still to be understood to enable a constructive critique of unlearning in the
production of dynamic performance.
Equally related to the question of procedure is the question of musical aes-
thetics. Much existing research on pedagogy strives to help musicians and
improve performance, yet it takes for granted that there are set standards for
excellence. But the usefulness as well as appropriateness of such standards var-
ies according to context. Sciarrino’s piece makes it clear that pitch has to play a
subsidiary role to timbre, and that perfecting the harmonics—as violinists are
trained to do—is beside the point; absolute pitch is often useful in contempo-
rary music (where sequential pitch relationships may be such that intervals are
hard to grasp) but detrimental in many other contexts (ensemble performance
and early music are two such examples); achieving bow strokes at the optimum
position on the string is fundamental when playing any string instrument, but
no string player would perform a piece of music playing at only that position.
These are aesthetic matters: selection and ordering of tasks have aesthetic con-
sequences, and no one but musicians can make these decisions.
I have argued that the order in which musicians process tasks bears greater
significance on the performance outcome than has been considered until
now, and that clarity in this matter will further our understanding of the way
we map strategy and outcome in musical performance. Such an understand-
ing will assist performers and composers, but may equally benefit cultural
theorists and anthropologists, for whom this research provides an example of
implicit knowledge that forms a building block of a global practice of musical
performance.

References
Abbado, Michelangelo. 1973. Come studiare Sciarrino, Salvatore. 1975. Per Mattia: per
i Capricci di Paganini. Edizioni Suvini violino. Ricordi: Milan.
Zerboni: Milan.

145
 Association-Based
Experimentation as an
Artistic Research Method
Valentin Gloor
Orpheus Research Centre in Music

Artistic work processes are neither “rational” nor linear, and they cannot be planned.
They’re dominated by selection, variation, and stabilisation.1
—Martin Tröndle (2012, 191, my translation)

Even though there be a mental spontaneity, it can certainly not create ideas or
summon them ex abrupto. Its power is limited to selecting amongst those which the
associative machinery has already introduced or tends to introduce.
—William James ([1890] 1983, 559)

Questions of methodology are of major importance to all inquiry claiming to be

research.2 It is only with knowledge of the method applied in a certain research
project that the research outcomes can be appreciated and—crucial to all sci-
entific research—can be verified or falsified by other researchers. Therefore,
any new research field will have to cope with questions of methodology at an
early stage. Due to the lack of specific knowledge in the new field known as
artistic research, researchers from other fields will not be able to judge the
quality of the outcomes in most cases, but they will make interim assessments
about the research field by evaluating its methodology. Artistic researchers may
or may not accept this approach, but they are unlikely to build up a field worthy
of respect within the research community if they do not respect the “rules of
the game” by presenting clear methodologies.
In artistic research discourse, three basic possibilities for connecting art and
research have been established within the past few years: research into art,
research for art, and research through art (Frayling 1993).3 The first category

1 In the original: “Künstlerische Arbeitsprozesse verlaufen weder ‘rational’ noch linear, und sie sind auch
nicht planbar. Sie sind durch Selektion, Variation und Stabilisation gekennzeichnet.”
2 “Scientific method is the process whereby scientists, working concurrently and over time, investigate
and acquire knowledge with the aim of obtaining a clear and precise representation of the world in
ways that translate back to the world and shape its manner of operation” (Coessens, Crispin, and Doug-
las 2009, 50).
3 The three basic approaches are widely used in artistic research discourse.

147
 Valentin Gloor

covers traditional research in the humanities about the arts. “Research for art”
can develop new artistic means through extra-artistic research practices—often
applied in design, for example. In this article, I shall limit myself to “research
through art.” This is “the most recent, and without doubt also the most con-
troversial approach . . . carried out within the arts themselves . . . in which the
object of research is the artist’s own art or artistic process” (Coessens, Crispin,
and Douglas 2009, 46).
If the artist is simultaneously the researching subject and the researched
object (or at least part of it), standard scientific research methodologies can-
not be applied to research through art, because the “exclusion of the observer”
as one of the basic rules of scientific research is not respected (ibid., 50).
Objectivity is not a primary goal of artistic research. This profound difference
in methodology makes it necessary to redefine research methods if they are to
bring any results in this new field.

a s s o c i ati o n
“Association” as artistic resource has not yet been sufficiently appreciated. It
has been discussed in philosophy and psychology, but it is not yet prominent
in artistic research discourse. Nevertheless, I claim that association in the sense
of William James’s ([1890] 1983, 549, 556) “voluntary association” is already a
broadly applicable and accepted method of art practice and artistic research.
James, an American philosopher and psychologist, developed a neurobio-
logical concept of association avant la lettre in chapter fourteen, “Association,”
of his magnum opus The Principles of Psychology (ibid., 519–569). He does not
agree with the formerly applied categories of association by similarity, associ-
ation by contiguity, association by habit, etc., but sets up his own approach in
clear contrast to the overview given of the association discourse that started
with Aristotle,4 came to life in seventeenth century English philosophy, and was
broadly discussed in the so-called English School5 of the nineteenth century. “I
shall try to show, in the pages which immediately follow, that there is no other
elementary causal law of association than the law of neural habit” (ibid., 533).

The amount of activity at any given point in the brain-cortex is the sum of
the tendencies of all other points to discharge into it, such tendencies being
proportionate (1) to the number of times the excitement of each other point
may have accompanied that of the point in question; (2) to the intensity of such
excitements; and (3) to the absence of any rival point functionally disconnected with
the first point, into which the discharges might be diverted. (Ibid., 534)

In its reliance on brain processes rather than on terminological similarities,

this “mechanical” model works for any category of association. James uses it
for two different association settings: spontaneous and voluntary association.
Whereas in spontaneous association “the train of imagery wanders at its own

4 See Aristotle (1984).

5 See James ([1890] 1983, 565–568).

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 Association-Based Experimentation as an Artistic Research Method

sweet will” in “revery, or musing,” “great segments of the flux of our ideas con-
sist of something very different from this. They are guided by a distinct pur-
pose or conscious interest” (ibid., 549). This conscious interest—James uses
the German word nachdenken to make himself clear—uses voluntary association
for the solution of problems and for the recollection of forgotten things.

part oF the c r eati ve pr o c ess

In the James quotation at the beginning of this article, James relates the process
of solving intellectual problems to the selection of the “right” elements from
among the many objects association brings up in our mind as we think about
something. This model is fully applicable to creative processes in the arts and
even encloses embodied processes, as it sets (any) neural habit in the centre. If
we adapt James’s theory to creative processes, we might summarise: Association
is the neurobiological mechanism generating variants in thought and behaviour, from
which we are free to select elements fulfilling our (artistic) needs.
Clearly, the selection process itself would be a broad field for discourse and
would depend upon our creative domain, our criteria applied to distinguish
“better” from “worse” and our artistic goals. It is open to different methodo-
logical approaches. Yet, no matter how we select later on, this creative process
of generating variants and selecting from them is a highly experimental set-
ting. However, we are not able to relate to scientific terminology at this point:
any non-replicable experiment within scientific research loses its credibility.
In total contrast, the experimental quality of the associative process in artistic
research is not only inimitable, it must also necessarily lead to different results
if carried out by different researchers. This is due to a very different measure of
quality: if we strive to judge the quality of artistic research carried out by asso-
ciation-based experimentation, we may only do so by including the researcher,
who, with his or her “associative machinery” is one central, non-replicable part
of the research. Quality in artistic research can only be measured with regard
to coherence.
Interestingly, in the other quotation at the beginning of this article, Martin
Tröndle uses Jamesian terminology to describe the artistic process. He stresses
the point just discussed: “The traceability of the ‘experimental setting’ is of no
interest—even though it would be crucial to any scientific experiment—only
the coherence of the whole is”6 (Tröndle 2012, 190, my translation).

art pr ac ti c e o r a r ti s ti c r esearc h ?

I have discussed the meaning of methodology within a research field and

the incompatibility of some principles of scientific methodology with artis-
tic research. Furthermore, I have demonstrated a modified understanding

6 In the original: “Dabei ist nicht die Nachvollziehbarkeit der ‘Versuchsanordnung’ von Interesse—wie
es von einem wissenschaftlichen Experiment gefordert würde—, sondern allein die Stimmigkeit der
Gesamtheit.”

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 Valentin Gloor

of “experiment” and have introduced association-based experimentation as

a method for artistic research. Yet, voluntary association is a broadly applied
method in art practice. How can we distinguish association-based experimen-
tation in art practice from its application in artistic research? There is not yet a
generally accepted answer to this question within artistic research discourse. I
claim that artistic research cannot limit itself to applying methods in order to
generate works of art. Tröndle (ibid., 191, my translation) writes: “[Artists] ‘feel,’
when they are right, meaning that they have embodied their methodological
know-how. Artistic research is embodied.”7 We should challenge this statement,
because it makes artists synonymous with artistic researchers.
Since the method of association-based experimentation (including various
techniques of selection) is a basic creative process, I argue that it has always
been an essential work approach in the artistic domains. It only becomes a
method of artistic research when association-based experimentation is no
longer a simple method (unconsciously) applied in order to generate an artistic
product of any sort, but becomes itself one focus of our interest. Still I do not
want to extract the “associative machinery” to submit it to scientific research.
Association-based experimentation within an artistic research context is part
of a process that includes the artist and the art practice, trying to consider
the “coherence of the whole.” Artistic research has to develop a multifocal
approach. If our goal is the emergence of an “epistemic thing” in the sense used
by Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (1997), then this epistemic thing cannot be a mere
product of art; it has to include the whole (process) and render it communica-
ble to others.

References
Aristotle. 1984. On Memory [De Memoria et James, William. (1890) 1983. The Principles
Reminiscentia]. Translated by J. I. Beare. In of Psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised University Press. First published 1890
Oxford Translation, edited by Jonathan (New York: Holt).
Barnes, 2 vols., 1:714–20. Princeton, NJ: Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. 1997. Toward a
Princeton University Press / Bollingen History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing
Series. Proteins in the Test Tube‬. Stanford, CA:
Coessens, Kathleen, Darla Crispin, and Stanford University Press.
Anne Douglas. 2009. The Artistic Turn: Tröndle, Martin. 2012. “Methods of Artistic
A Manifesto. Collected Writings of the Research—Kunstforschung im Spiegel
Orpheus Institute. Leuven: Leuven künstlerischer Arbeitsprozesse.” In
University Press. Kunstforschung als ästhetische Wissenschaft,
Frayling, Christopher. 1993. Research in Art edited by Martin Tröndle and Julia
and Design. Royal College of Art Research Warmers, 169–198. Bielefeld, Ger.:
Papers, vol. 1, no. 1. London: Royal Transcript.
College of Art.

7 In the original: “[Die Künstler] ‘fühlen,’ wann sie richtig liegen, das heisst, sie haben ihr methodisches
Wissen verkörpert. Künstlerische Forschung ist embodied.”

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 Association and Selection:
Toward a New Flexibility in the Form
and Content of the Liederabend

Valentin Gloor
Orpheus Research Centre in Music

i ntr o duc ti o n
The development of new Liederabend (evening of songs) performance settings
can be linked to Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s concept of experimental systems.
“Experimental systems are to be seen as the smallest integral working units of
research. As such, they are systems of manipulation designed to give unknown
answers to questions that the experimenters themselves are not yet able clearly
to ask” (Rheinberger 1997, 28). Within an experimental system, Rheinberger
identifies “technical objects” on the one hand (the known and clearly defined
experimental conditions) and “epistemic things” on the other (the “objects of
inquiry. As epistemic objects, they present themselves in a characteristic, irre-
ducible vagueness. This vagueness is inevitable because, paradoxically, epis-
temic things embody what one does not yet know” [ibid.]).1
The application of this concept to my development of new Liederabend per-
formance settings makes it necessary to define “technical objects” and “epis-
temic things” for this specific context. Therefore, the components of which
the Liederabend performances consist must first be identified. I claim those
components are (1) the (musical or extra-musical) topic (and any intellectual
concepts linked to it), (2) the (musical, textual, spatial, and visual) materials, (3)
the arrangement of those materials into one “concert” programme, and (4) the
real-time interpretation of the material (the actual performance with its sur-
rounding intellectual concepts). A difficulty in applying Rheinberger’s concept
to my work lies in the question, What shall we define as the actual experimental
system? Is it the whole working context or only the performance (or the perfor-
mance setting)?

1 Video illustrations for this article may be found online at http://www.orpheusinstituut.be/anthology/

repository

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 Valentin Gloor

the develo p Men t o F n e W l ied eraben d perFo rM an c e

s etti ngs a s an experi Men tal syste M

I will test the first hypothesis, which is that the entire working process is the
experimental system, and that the Liederabend performance or the new form
of Liederabend performance setting is the “epistemic thing.” If this is the case,
the technical objects would be the topic, the music, the text, the scene, the
programme, and all the setup and preparation processes, whereas the epis-
temic thing would then lie within the (artistically or aesthetically) successful
or unsuccessful performance setting. Yet this performance setting itself would
almost immediately become a technical object, too. Its components (music,
text, programme structure, etc.) are—in this case—normally fully defined
through the preparation. The only unknown factors remaining are the real-
time interpretation and the audience reaction. But this is the case in almost any
classical music concert, and therefore the epistemic gain that we could draw
from new Liederabend performance settings would be extremely limited and
not at all unique to this particular setting.
My second hypothesis establishes the Liederabend performance in its new
setting as an “experimental system.” This perspective provides a better pos-
sibility to structure the working process and distinguish between “technical
objects” and “epistemic things” within the working and preparation pro-
cess—either we define two categories of preparation steps (“technical” and
“epistemic” steps) or we try to find technical and epistemic parts within every
single preparation step. We therefore have to identify all the work steps con-
nected to the Liederabend performance setting; in chronological order, they
are: researching and establishing the topic, searching for (musical, textual,
spatial and visual) materials, selecting the materials for the programme, set-
ting-up the materials in a timeline to form a programme appropriate to to the
performers and the performance space, practising the programme, rehearsing
and developing the actual perceptible performance, interpreting in the course
of the performance, and evaluating the performance afterwards to redevelop
the Liederabend performance setting. For the time being I shall limit myself to
these processes (and keep them in this order), even though there are numerous
other factors that could equally well question their roles as technical objects
or epistemic things (e.g., interpretation concepts derived from study and/or
tradition, social concepts of concert settings, the concert hall itself, the musical
instruments, etc.).

“Technical” and “epistemic” components

None of the performance development steps mentioned above can be iden-
tified purely as a technical object or epistemic thing since all these processes
contain sufficiently defined factors, on the one hand, but on the other also con-
tain components the exact nature of which is yet unknown. We can only find
the epistemic thing by understanding those processes in more detail.

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 Association-Based Experimentation as an Artistic Research Method

Even though these processes do contain very different parts (e.g., social interaction
in rehearsals, extraconceptual factors such as economic constraints influencing
the selection of materials, or strong performative aspects within the actual
performance), each starts with a three-step creative process involving our capacity
to “think” in a broader sense of connecting intellectual, emotional, and corporal
(embodied) problem-solving capacities. Therefore, all the preparation processes
follow the association concept of William James (on which see James [(1890)
1983] and my chapter “Association-Based Experimentation as an Artistic Research
Method,” elsewhere in this volume) and they consist of (1) a “conscious interest”
triggering (2) “association” (the bringing up of variants), the results of which are
then sorted out by (3) “selection.” Within this article, I shall not analyse the actions
following this “thinking” process.

The process of “thinking”

The setup of the chosen material into a performance timeline serves as an exam-
ple clarifying the three starting steps within this one working process. Once the
material is chosen and ready, step one “conscious interest,” is the urge to obtain
a perceptible performance with a clear timeline of music, text, and action fol-
lowing one another or taking part at the same time. “Thinking” about possible
solutions, in the broad sense of “thinking” explained above, is not a linear pro-
cess, but an associative, at times chaotic playing with different possibilities or
variants, which come up as one applies different approaches to the material.
These different possibilities are brought up by association, because the possi-
bilities connect to part of our chosen material and the thoughts arising from it.
So we make an unorthodox move: we “externalise” the concept of association
or, rather, we mirror it. It becomes external and internal at once. In the history
of the concept of association, association only took place among internalised
and—in some contexts—even subconscious elements of our mind and our
feelings. I claim it is possible to (internally) associate between (external) mate-
rials. Therefore in step two, “associating,” we can try to concentrate on musical
connections, on textual connections, on contrasts of any sort—the number of
possible approaches is unlimited, as is the number of possible variants. Even if
we try to concentrate, given the nature of association we will get carried away.
The openness of the process and the highly individual and personal charac-
ter of association make this variant game unique and irreproducible. Specific
materials or specific approaches (musical, textual, and others) will very rarely
trigger the same variants within the association of two different people because
everyone has a different “library” of associable images and ideas. But even one
person might come up with different associations if he or she rethinks the
setup of the materials again later, since the experiences and the personal asso-
ciation “library” will have changed in the meantime. The third step within the
process also is highly individual: selection from among the variants brought up
by association, which can follow very different goals and priorities. To take a
simple example: we might have a short, funny music piece, a longer, rather mel-
ancholic music piece, and an analytic text to set up in a timeline. The approach
of forming an overall “arch” might lead to the variant “short, funny piece—
analytic text—longer, melancholic piece,” the search for contrasts might lead

153
to another variant “longer, melancholic piece—short, funny piece—analytic
text,” and so on. We can only select the preferred variant, if we “know” what our
goals are: What do we want to communicate? How will the audience feel during
and after the performance? But can we verbalise our goals at this stage? It is very
likely that we feel which variant is right even though we might not be able to say
exactly what our goals are.

I want to point out how close this is to Rheinberger’s (1997, 28) statement that
experimental systems are “designed to give unknown answers to questions that
the experimenters themselves are not yet able clearly to ask.” It is clear that the
association and selection process described above cannot be a technical object in
its irreducible vagueness and highly individual and personal nature that is subject
to almost unlimited factors of constant change. Therefore, these two steps can only
be the actual “epistemic thing.” We can clearly define every other factor around this
creative process (the choice of material, the setup, the interpretation, the evaluation,
etc.) in as much detail as we wish to. But we cannot define the actual process of
“thinking” in the broad sense of connecting intellectual, emotional, and corporal
(embodied) problem-solving capacities. This proves to be a perfect long-term
“epistemic thing” directly in the very heart of our artistic research work.

References
James, William. (1890) 1983. The Principles Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. 1997. Toward a
of Psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing
University Press. First published 1890 Proteins in the Test Tube‬. Stanford, CA:
(New York: Holt). Stanford University Press.

154
 Il palpitar del core:
The Heart-Beat of the “First Opera”

Andrew Lawrence-King
Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London
Royal Danish Academy of Music, Copenhagen
University of Western Australia

In January 2011 I undertook a research, education, and performance project with

students from the Royal Danish Academy of Music and invited guests, a production
of Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1607) in the Christians Kirke, Copenhagen. This
article explores the research background leading to that project and reflects on the
results of the experiment.

Research questions
My ongoing research and the 2011 Orfeo project are part of the performance
programme of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the
History of Emotions (CHE). Within CHE’s wide-ranging investigation of the
historical meaning of emotions, how they shaped social and political change
in the period 1100–1800 as well as shaping modern life, the performance pro-
gramme has a strong focus around the year 1600, on the music of Monteverdi’s
generation, on the first operas, and on Shakespeare.
One strand of CHE’s circa-1600 research concerns historical staging of early
opera: How can we better understand the historical meaning of period stage
practice? How can we apply that understanding to shape modern rehearsal
methodologies that make historical staging meaningful for today’s performers
and audiences?
Historically informed performance (HIP) of music has become a well-estab-
lished part of modern-day cultural activity, but relatively few theatrical or oper-
atic productions apply historical practices on stage. Despite the successes of
such specialist performers as Toronto’s Opera Atelier, the general perception—
as we began our preparations in late 2010—was that “authentic staging” might
be intellectually interesting and beautiful to watch, but was not dramatic, not
emotionally communicative. Many consider it a “museum piece,” irrelevant to
today’s theatre, simply too boring to succeed with modern audiences.

These criticisms are not unfair. They bring to mind similar criticism of early music
in previous decades. The response from early musicians was to raise the level of

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 Andrew Lawrence-King

academic research, practical training, and artistic performance, with the result that
many audiences today find HIP music more colourful, more communicative, more
interesting than standard “mainstream” interpretations. Perhaps the problem with
“authentic staging” is not that modern audiences cannot appreciate it, but that
performers need to do it better.

Experimental aims
Amongst early music aficionados, the catchphrase for HIP on stage is “Baroque
gesture.” This acknowledges the importance of hand gestures as a means of
dramatic communication, and reflects the significance of pioneering research
by Dene Barnett, whose groundbreaking book The Art of Gesture (1987) remains
an indispensable resource. Barnett’s painstaking work concentrated on eight-
eenth- and early nineteenth-century sources, mostly French and English, and
his approach when coaching performers was to emphasise precision and accu-
racy, discouraging experimentation or improvisation.
So in 2010, as we went into preproduction for Orfeo, it seemed that our aims
should be to transfer Barnett’s scholarly approach to early seventeenth-cen-
tury repertoire, and to improve performers’ delivery of their Baroque gestures.
But by the end of the experimental production four months later, these initial
aims had been radically revised. That redirection of aim is itself one of the most
fruitful outcomes of the whole project. Our experiment succeeded, but not in
the way we had expected, encouraging us to ask rather different questions in
ongoing research and future productions.

Barnett drew from his circa-1800 sources a concern for the “stroke” of a gesture,
the synchronised timing of the strongest instant of the hand’s movement with the
spoken delivery of a key word. It seems plausible that in seventeenth-century Italy
too, precise timing of Baroque gesture (as for any stage action) would be essential.
But in music-theatre, dramatic timing is determined by musical rhythm. Thus our
interest in gesture led us to reassess period evidence concerning rhythm, with
surprising results.

Rhythm circa 1600

Rhythm is the beating heart of music, from the powerful throb of heavy rock to
the sensual swing of jazz and the “vacillating rhythm” of Romantic rubato. For
many musicians and listeners today, the very word expressive suggests rhythmic
fluidity. And around the year 1600, Giulio Caccini ([1601/2]) makes rhythm a
high priority: “Music is nothing else than Text, and Rhythm, and Sound last
of all. And not the other way around!”1 But what did seventeenth-century

1 In the original, “la musica altro non essere, che la favella, e ‘l rithmo, & il suono per ultimo, e non per lo
contrario.” Caccini’s address to his readers, A i lettori, is widely accepted by early music practitioners as
a guide to period performance practice. Amongst musicologists, the foreword and collection of contin-
uo-songs (which include the famous Amarilli mia bella) are nowadays seen not as his own groundbreak-
ing statement but as the published outcome of decades of experiments by many musicians, singing solo
to instrumental accompaniment (see Coelho 2003).

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 Il palpitar del core

musicians mean by rhythm? A rock drummer’s groove? A jazz singer’s swing?

Twentieth-century rubato? Just as the design of instruments, pitch and tem-
perament, bowing styles, and ornamentation vary between different periods
and repertoires, so the aesthetics of rhythm also show historical change. The
very concept of time itself must be studied to understand how musicians were
thinking in that pre-Newtonian age.2 Around 1595, Shakespeare (2005, 365)
warns:

Ha, ha; keep time! How sour sweet music is

When time is broke and no proportion kept. (Richard II, 5.5)

And according to John Dowland (1609), steady, measured time is a moral

imperative: “Above all things keep the Equality of Measure. For to sing without
Law and Measure, is an offence to God himself.”

The historical principles of rhythm circa 1600 are generally accepted by academic
musicologists, so much so that they are no longer the subject of discussion, except
for small details of proportions (where period sources are themselves contradictory).
But these same principles are generally rejected by practitioners: attempts at
exploratory debate are often closed down as “ridiculous” or “unmusical.”3 Research
programmes such as CHE and Orpheus thus offer a rare and valuable opportunity to
investigate these questions both academically and in practical, creative experiment,
opening up new findings to informed debate.

Tactus principles
Tactus directs a Song according to Measure.
—John Dowland (1609)

2 Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) sets out the concept of absolute time.
Newton’s time is an absolute quantity, like distance, by which we can measure the movement of planets
in their orbits, our own heartbeats, or musical tempo. In the early twentieth century, Einstein’s theory
of relativity established a new concept of time, which can still seem paradoxical and counterintuitive
today. We are so comfortable with Newtonian time, that it is difficult to imagine how any other concept
might apply. But around the year 1600, the Aristotelian concept of time measured time by movement
(not vice versa). The movement of the stars is a cosmic clock, establishing the time upon which all lower,
sublunary, movement (including music) depends. When around 1588 Galileo observed the pendulum
effect, he timed the swing of a chandelier in Pisa cathedral by the movement of his own pulse.
3 The consensus view amongst musicians and music-lovers in general is well illustrated by the article
on “Tempo Rubato” on Wikipedia (2013), “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” A section
heading states, unchallenged, that “Accompaniment yields/adjusts to melody,” whereas the historically
documented description of Chopin’s rubato, “the right hand may use a certain freedom while the left
hand must keep strict time” is ridiculed as “something like … a poor blockhead who hammers away in
strict time without yielding to the singer who, in sheer despair, must renounce all artistic expression.”
Expression and rubato are explicitly linked—one is the source of the other. The most extensive quotations
are from early nineteenth-century sources, which are taken as arbiters of absolute taste. An expert and
more nuanced appraisal of modern rubato has emerged from the recent Cambridge University CHARM
project. Comparison of early and late twentieth-century elite recordings has shown clear changes of
fashion in the application of rubato. My personal experience is that most present-day musicians assume
that playing rhythmically cannot be high art: this assumption is based not on period evidence, but on
personal beliefs acquired in elementary training, supported by conservatoire teaching. Even some early
music performers espouse as “basic musicality” the particular style of rubato that CHARM identifies as
having become fashionable in the 1950s.

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 Andrew Lawrence-King

The fundamental concept of seicento rhythm is tactus—the organisation of

rhythm (both theoretically and practically) by a long, slow count. The slow con-
stancy of tactus is an imitation of the perfect motion of the stars, whose circular
orbits create the heavenly sounds of the “music of the spheres.” It is felt in the
human body as the heartbeat and pulse, or measured as a walking step. In prac-
tical music making, it can be shown by an up-and-down movement of the hand,
or by a swinging pendulum.
Tactus counts the slow-moving, large note-values. Fast-moving, smaller
note-values are derived by sub-dividing the slow tactus count. This contrasts
with the modern elementary music-student’s remedy of counting difficult
rhythms with a fast beat in the smallest note-value.
Around 1600, the ornamental style of written or improvised divisions or dim-
inutions invites a soloist to divide the composer’s single long note into many
short notes. In division playing, the rhythmic structure is set by the original
(long note) composition: the soloist’s flourishes must fit into this structure.
Thus in general, soloists are guided by the rhythmic structure of the accompa-
niment. This too contrasts sharply with the nineteenth- and twentieth-century
assumption that accompanists should “follow.”4
What appear to modern eyes to be time signatures are actually the last vestige
of medieval mensuration symbols, indicating semi-permanent division of the
underlying long tactus into two or three, with further subdivisions shown by
smaller note values, and/or by “coloration,” the choice of black or white nota-
tion. A change of “time signature” therefore indicates a new proportion: the
underlying tactus is constant, but the listener senses a change say from binary
to ternary metre within the slow beat, together with a change in the perceived
level of activity. As an elementary aid, the tactus could be shown with a simple
down-up movement of the hand. This movement of the hand was intended to
maintain a regular tactus, not to show “interpretative” variations of tempo. In
general, ensembles were not conducted.5
Close reading of well-known sources circa 1600 shows that tactus and rhyth-
mic guidance from the accompaniment apply also in recitative.6 In a stronger

4 Period sources from Agostino Agazzari’s Del sonare sopra ‘l basso (Siena, 1607) and the anonymous Il
Corago (c.1630) to Leopold Mozart’s Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule (Augsburg, 1756) agree that the
accompaniment guides soloists. For keyboard players, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart writes in a 1777 letter
that “in tempo rubato the left hand should go on playing in strict time” (Anderson 1985, 340) This prac-
tice is preserved into the nineteenth century with Chopin’s accompanying left hand being “the trunk
of the tree” which remains still, whilst the “branches and leaves” of the right hand may waver. Richard
Hudson (1994) distinguishes between “early rubato” (accompaniment remains constant, i.e., tactus)
and “late rubato” (generally vacillating rhythm, the accompaniment follows a wayward melody). Barton
Hudson (1996) provides a handy summary of Richard Hudson’s book.
5 According to Il Corago, the principal continuo-player might show the tactus with his hand for large
ensembles spread across a wide stage, but even this “conducting from the continuo” is expressly ruled
out for recitative. There is no period support for modern-style conducting.
6 This is highly controversial, but I believe that the period evidence is clear, especially when read in the
context of the historical assumption of tactus as the norm. (Most modern readers assume twentieth-cen-
tury rubato as the norm, distorting their view of period source material). The detailed argument
depends on close reading of well-known seicento texts specifying how to manage changes of time—what
Frescobaldi calls guidare il tempo (guiding, driving time). The results of my CHE research in this area will
be written up in a forthcoming article on “Redefining Recitative.” An introduction (Lawrence-King
2013) is available online.

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 Il palpitar del core

version of these principles, the same tactus is applied throughout a long

work, say, Monteverdi’s Vespers or an early opera. In the strongest version, the
same tactus, around one beat per second, is applied to the entire early seven-
teenth-century repertory, with allowance for different acoustics, and within the
limits of human ability. (Of course, in this period there were no metronomes,
no stopwatches with which to measure time with super-human precision!)
Within the HIP community, these tactus principles have been adopted only
in part: the idea of a slow count is widely accepted; proportions are regarded
as “hard core” historicism, ignored by many performers; most large ensembles
and operas are not “directed by tactus” but by a conductor; the possibilities of
tactus for recitative, of consistent tactus for a whole song, let alone for a large
work or an entire repertoire, remain largely untried.7

t ac tus pr i nc i ples a ppli ed in prac tic e

Back in 1987, Houle (1987, 34) speculated how tactus-led music might sound.
“It would be interesting to hear fine musicians playing seventeenth-century
music conducted according to the techniques of that period. It is possible to
imagine that the performers would be less rigorously controlled, and therefore
more responsible for the metrical coherence of their own performances. We
simply do not know what effect such a re-creation of conducting technique
might have.” Of course, the essential directorial technique of the seicento is not
to have a conductor at all, but to devolve responsibility for maintaining tactus
to individual musicians, especially the continuo accompanists. There is still a
vital role for a director (a corago, in period terms), but the job is closer to that
of a modern stage director: musical directions are given in rehearsal, leaving
performers to run the performance for themselves.8

7 As co-director of the ensemble Tragicomedia in the 1980s, I led many performances which were
tactus-led rather than conducted, and which applied slow-counted rhythm even to recitatives. This was
radically “hard core” for the late twentieth-century, but in those days our approach to changes of pulse
did not correspond to the evidence revealed by more recent close reading of period sources.
8 I was privileged to play arpa doppia in Roger Norrington’s pioneering production of Orfeo during the mid
1980s, which he directed strongly in rehearsal, but did not conduct in performance. (In the Royal Albert
Hall BBC Proms performance, Norrington sat amongst the audience in a high balcony, from where
he sang the Echo!) The absence of a conductor heightened communication within the ensemble, and
gestures (derived from dance movements, rather than from oratory sources) led certain tutti entries. In
rehearsal, Norrington assumed the role of a corago, with Kay Lawrence as assistant and choreographer.
With a carefully prepared edition, historically informed approach, unity of music and staging, and an
excellent company of performers including many international-level early music specialists, this pro-
duction set the standard for the next few decades. However, principles of tactus were not applied, and
continuo-players had to follow soloists as best they could, especially in the most passionate speeches.
I remember that some continuo colleagues considered that not being able to follow the soloist’s
rhythms was a sign of an especially powerful performance! In contrast, nowadays I tell soloists, “Your
continuo players are highly-trained accompanists, specialists in the style, who have rehearsed with you
and who are carefully watching the score. If they cannot follow you, what chance does the average audi-
ence-member have of understanding what you are doing?” During rehearsals in Copenhagen in 2011, I
often repeated the tongue-in-cheek reminder that “perhaps the audience might not comprehend every
word of the seventeenth-century Italian verse,” followed by the serious instruction “to be so clear in
your speech and actions, and have such a clear vision of the meaning, that the audience do understand.”
Period sources agree that performers have a primary duty to be understood by the audience: it is
not historically appropriate to be so “highly artistic” that no one can understand you! The burden of
responsibility for being understood lies with the performer, not with the audience.

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 Andrew Lawrence-King

For the last twenty years, I have been experimenting independently with tac-
tus methods (directing, but never conducting) with the Harp Consort and as
guest director of early music ensembles, modern orchestras, choirs, and opera
companies all around the world. Tactus can be led by any musician with a good
sense of steady rhythm, not only by the musical director: it is not interpretive.
Performances and recordings have featured tactus but no conductor, visual tac-
tus beating, audible tactus with a stick (Lully-style), orchestras led by a danc-
er’s tactus-driven feet, and ensembles conducting themselves with gestures or
steps.
In the production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo under consideration, we extended
tactus methods to a company of about eighty performers,9 to the synchronisa-
tion of text, music, and acting, and to some of the most expressive recitar can-
tando ever written. And we tried to apply all the tactus principles, fully, in order
to review the results of such a radically historical approach.

r eh ea r s a l M eth o d o lo g y
I briefly met some of the performers in October 2010, and the following January
worked with solo singers for a few days before the project week itself. A new
edition was made from the original prints, prioritising clear presentation of
text and rhythm and correcting some long-standing errors in previous editions.
With six days to rehearse, the outline schedule was simple: one day for each
of the five acts, plus a day for final dress rehearsals. Day by day, we worked on
music in the morning, split into sectional rehearsals for staging and continuo in
the afternoon, and reunited to assemble everything we had so far each evening.
Participants were warned from the outset that there would be no conduc-
tor, that the priorities would be text and rhythm, and that they should learn
Monteverdi’s written rhythms precisely. These instructions were amplified in a
“How to Prepare” handout sent to all singers.
Nevertheless, whilst most singers arrived at rehearsals knowing Monteverdi’s
pitches accurately, many of them were shocked to find how unaware they were
of his rhythms. And despite everyone’s best efforts, a few tricky moments were
never realised accurately. The morning after the second performance, my pro-
ject diary notes that “The remaining mistakes in singers’ rhythms seem to be
places they learnt wrong before January rehearsals. Wrong memorisation is
worse than not knowing it at all! In spite of October sessions, letters, etc., sing-
ers didn’t realise that we really meant to do the show in Tactus. I suspect that
coaches did not understand the significance of this, either. I know that at least

9 Such a large company is unhistorical for Orfeo. Modern scholarship agrees that in 1609 the entire
work was sung by about eight performers, with each singer taking several roles as well as singing the
choruses, one-to-a-part. In Copenhagen, we had fewer strings, but many more singers than Monteverdi
had in Mantua—this reflected the educational priority to involve as many students as were available.
The experiment of applying tactus (with no conductor) was thus all the more challenging, but we had
no difficulties at all with the choruses—the few problems we did have were with soloists’ rhythms in
recitatives.

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 Il palpitar del core

one singer was told [by a coach outside the project] in January ‘you can ignore
the rhythms in this style’” (Lawrence-King 2011).
I repeatedly warned the singers not to learn from CDs—“they are not ‘authen-
tic evidence’ and most (all?) of them are wrong.” Nevertheless, some soloists
memorised the same wrong rhythms that have been passed from one record-
ing to another. Many of the mistakes were familiar to me, from old recordings
and other directors’ projects I had participated in! In every single instance, the
incorrect or “free” version had less contrast than Monteverdi’s notation.
In individual coaching sessions, as well as in ensemble rehearsals, I spent
a lot of time (fifty minutes in the hour) on text and rhythm. Actors spoke the
text in rhythm, trying to approach the pitch contours of Monteverdi’s music
in dramatic (spoken) declamation. Only in the final moments of each session
would they actually sing: “Sound last of all. And not the other way around!”
Nevertheless, my diary comment just before the premiere was that “even more
work on speech would have been good” (ibid.).
I frequently employed the simple but powerful rehearsal exercise of asking
singers to show the tactus with their hands. This helped them concentrate on
tactus and on uniting each individual’s tactus with other ensemble members.
It also gave me an outward and visible sign of each individual’s inner focus—if
a tactus arm faltered, I knew that someone had temporarily lost the vital prior-
itisation of rhythm.
Another hand exercise was to show the accented syllable of each Italian
word with a gesture. This helped singers appreciate the distinction between
so-called good and bad syllables, and again gave me a visual indication of what
they were thinking about. We then combined the two exercises, asking some to
beat tactus, others to indicate good syllables.
A few brave souls tried to do both exercises simultaneously, one with each
hand. The challenge is not so much to coordinate flailing arms, as to sustain
the mental focus on two, independent variables. Performers with jazz experi-
ence found it easier to syncopate verbal accentuation against a constant tac-
tus rhythm. This skill would have been taken for granted in Monteverdi’s time;
dedicated training is needed to re-establish it today.
My aim was to maintain a consistent tactus, around MM 60, throughout the
whole work. We immediately observed that this produced more contrast, by
forcing singers to take Monteverdi’s fast notes fast enough, the slow notes slow
enough, rather than varying the speed to make life easier! Consistent tactus
also gave each participant an objective measure of rhythmic precision, rather
than asking them to make arbitrary decisions about “free interpretation.”
However, my own long familiarity with Orfeo in the standard early music inter-
pretation and colleagues’ unfamiliarity with this particular tactus principle did
produce a few inconsistencies of speed in rehearsals. To clarify this statement,
we reliably kept tactus during a particular scene, but in a few instances we
did not always keep the same tactus from one scene to another, or from one

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rehearsal to another.10 This was a valuable lesson learnt from this experiment,
that it takes a while to establish a secure sense of consistent time, but that it’s
important to help every participant develop that sense.
It should be emphasised that such strictness in maintaining the same tac-
tus is a requirement placed on the director in rehearsal. In performance,
each participant tries to maintain that familiar tactus, but human nature will
inevitably produce changes as the emotional temperature warms and chills.
Those changes will then be “according to the affetto” as period sources repeat-
edly demand. The desired result is a humanist structure of rhythm, the best
imitation of celestial perfection that we mortals can manage, not digital-age
precision!
Despite such uncompromising demands, singers responded positively to the
discipline of tactus: “It changed my whole approach to studying music, for solos
as well as for chorus” commented one guest, an experienced professional opera
singer. When, afterwards, they listened to CD recordings of other productions,
they noticed the difference—“Those singers were changing the rhythms essen-
tially for comfort”—and perceived a lack of contrast and strength in the “free”
version. Another similar comparison by a minor-role student singer found the
free version to be “strange and shapeless!”
Perhaps the greatest benefit of the tactus approach was that it empowered
individual performers, giving them also great responsibility for holding the
show together (power and responsibility normally arrogated by a conductor).
This sense of responsibility and empowerment carried over into other aspects
of the production, helping us achieve so much in just one week of rehearsal.
Nevertheless, we were only able to scratch the surface of tactus investigation.
Much more experimentation remains to be done, and some of this is already
being carried forward in other CHE projects. In Copenhagen, it took all our
efforts to approach the historical starting point, of sharing across the whole
ensemble reliable command of a steady, consistent tactus for the entire show.
(As far as I know, this has never previously been attempted.)
We began to rethink the role of the continuo, guiding rather than following.
But we did not have time to examine fully the “humanist structure of rhythm”
mentioned above, the natural, involuntary variations of tactus according to the
affetto experienced moment by moment by individual performers.
We did not even begin to apply historical prescriptions for how to vary the
tactus deliberately, “driving the time” according to the affetto in certain, pre-
cisely specified situations. Nor did we attempt Caccini’s famous sprezzatura, in
which the continuo maintains tactus, but the singer temporarily (and rarely,
only in very particular circumstances) departs from the measure. These are
advanced tactus skills, which cry out for experimental investigation, but it’s
important to emphasise that they function differently in the historical con-
text, which assumes tactus by default. It is a sad (but commonly encountered)

10 It should be emphasised that such strictness in maintaining the same tactus is a requirement placed on
the director in rehearsal, to establish and confirm this for every participant. In performance, everyone
tries to maintain that familiar tactus.

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 Il palpitar del core

distortion of the historical evidence to cite sprezzatura as an excuse to ignore

tactus completely and continuously!

r eFlec ti o n
As an educational and performance project, the experiment was highly suc-
cessful. Without any conductor, a large ensemble achieved an excellent level
of rhythmic cohesion, across a wide performing area. Individual performers
felt empowered by their personal responsibility for rhythm, supported by
a strong team spirit, and excited at the artistic results. The audience (much
more numerous than expected from previous, less experimental productions)
received the show warmly, and many returned the following night for the sec-
ond performance. The success of this project led directly to the commissioning
of a similar, but longer and fully professional production of Dido and Aeneas for
Concerto Copenhagen, Scandinavia’s leading Baroque orchestra.
Whilst the musical aspect of the project engaged chiefly with the application
of tactus, we also explored questions of historical staging. In this area, early
musicians have less collective experience to draw on. This has perhaps the
advantage that there are fewer false preconceptions to be fought against, but
it should be admitted that we found ourselves on the initial stages of a steep
learning curve. Reflecting on the results of this project, we have made signifi-
cant changes to our rehearsal methodology and performance priorities.
We had begun to prepare for this project somewhat naively, looking for the
“correct” Baroque gesture for each significant word of the text. Though there
are specific gestures for certain concepts, many highly significant words are not
mapped onto a particular gesture. And the effectiveness of the gesture depends
strongly on other factors: body posture, personal confidence, individual inten-
tion. Our ongoing research explores links also with period dance and historical
swordsmanship.
Even the term Baroque gesture is unhelpful, since it focuses too much atten-
tion on the “ballet of the hands,” which easily becomes disconnected from
the underlying dramatic purpose. Audiences can instantly recognise a “mere
gesture.” To refocus scholarly and artistic attention, I am encouraging use of
the term historical action, recognising the crucial importance of the art of ges-
ture within a wider set of period stage skills. Hand gestures must be linked to
full-body acting, supported by elegantly powerful posture and movement. The
spectators’ attention should be drawn to the actor’s face and eyes.
As we build up knowledge, experience, and expertise, I hope we will arrive at
the level where we can approach historical action in a similar way to continuo
realisation. The best of today’s continuo players have so internalised the period
rules of harmony, voice-leading and accompaniment aesthetics, that they can
improvise their realisation spontaneously and creatively, whilst remaining
within the historical style boundaries.
With this aim in view, I have replaced the word gesture with action in the title of
my ongoing research into “Text, Rhythm, and Action” for CHE. Many familiar
historical documents as well as newly-examined sources continue to reveal fresh

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 Andrew Lawrence-King

insights in the light of our revised understanding of rhythm and recitative. All
this research feeds into continuing practical experiment and professional pro-
ductions, gradually shaping a new understanding of how Renaissance theories
of emotional communication might be relevant to modern-day performance.

My thanks go to the entire Orfeo company, to Eva Hess Thaysen and the Royal
Danish Academy of Music (DKDM), to the Rector and Verger of the Christians
Kirke, to Professor Jane Davidson and CHE, to Stephen Player, and to Katerina
Antonenko.

References
Anderson, Emily, ed. and trans. 1985. The Houle, George. 1987. Meter in Music, 1600–
Letters of Mozart and His Family. Revised 1800: Performance, Perception, and Notation.
by Stanley Sadie and Fiona Smart. 3rd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
London: Macmillan. 1st ed. published Hudson, Barton. 1996. Review of Stolen Time:
1938 (London: Macmillan). The History of Rubato, by Richard Hudson.
Barnett, Dene. 1987. The Art of Gesture: The Performance Practice Review 9 (2): 194–200.
Practices and Principles of 18th Century Hudson, Richard. 1994. Stolen Time: The
Acting. Heidelberg: C. Winter. History of Tempo Rubato. Oxford: Oxford
Caccini, Giulio. [1601/2.] Le nuove musiche. University Press / Clarendon Press.
Florence. Lawrence-King, Andrew. 2011. Project diary
Coelho, Victor. 2003. “The Players of for Orfeo, Copenhagen, January.
Florentine Monody in Context and in ———. 2013. “Having a Heavenly Time: The
History, and a Newly Recognized Source Harmony of the Spheres and Practical
for Le nuove musiche.” Journal of Seventeenth- Music-Making.” Homepage of the Harp
Century Music 9: 48–67. Consort. Accessed 8 October 2013. http://
Dowland, John, trans. 1609. Andreas www.theharpconsort.com/#!research/
Ornithoparcus his Micrologus, or Introduction: c1dp3.
Containing the Art of Singing. London. Shakespeare, William. 2005. Richard II. In
Available from Early English Books The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete
Online. http://eebo.chadwyck.com/ Works, edited by John Jowett, William
home. Andreas Ornithoparchus’s Musicae Montgomery, Gary Taylor, and Stanley
activae micrologus first published 1517 Wells, 2nd ed., 339–67. Oxford: Oxford
(Leipzig). University Press / Clarendon Press.
Wikipedia. 2013. “Tempo Rubato.” Wikipedia.
Accessed 8 October. http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Tempo_rubato.

164
 Techno-Intuition:
Experiments with Sound
in the Environment1

Yolande Harris
Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS),
University of Washington, Seattle

c ha r gi ng th e s pac es bet Ween tec h n o lo g y , in tu itio n , bo d y ,

s o und , a nd th e envi r o nM e n t

The notion of techno-intuition emerged from my artistic research into how

one’s relationship to the environment is established and enhanced through
sound and listening. With the aid of sonic technologies and awareness-en-
hancing practices, we can re-experience environments we know and access
others beyond our physiological abilities, such as those underwater. Such expe-
riences are mediated both by our technologies and by our interpretations—
our techno-intuitions. Rather than consider technology as antithetical to the
environment, I blend experiments using technological instruments with bod-
ily experiences of the environment, using sound to provoke a sense of direct
involvement. For example, combining both technical and intuitive approaches,
I explored sonic navigations and underwater sound, making the inaudible
audible through sonification and audification techniques, and drawing the
unconscious into consciousness through deep listening practices and psycho-
logical therapy using sound. These experiments led me back to considering
human scale, and our physiological and emotional relationship to different
environments through examples of walking, swimming, and sailing. I noticed
that becoming physically involved provokes an attitude of openness to the
presence of sound and the environment, even those beyond human scale. Such
an embodied approach, driven by the use of sound, physically and emotionally
challenges us to expand beyond ourselves.
I use the term “environment” as an inclusive notion encompassing interac-
tions between natural, human, and media environments. Sound is a fundamen-

1 Elaborated and extended from my presentation “Techno-Intuition: Notes on Using Sound to Relate
to our Environment” at the International Symposium on Electronic Arts, ISEA12, Albuquerque, 20
September 2012.

165
 Yolande Harris

tal part of the environment in general and binds us to it, opening up aspects
of awareness and meaning that may be overlooked in visually dominant cul-
tures. Sound is contextual: it propagates and exists beyond boundaries of mate-
rial matter, thus provoking relationships between beings in the human social
world, the larger environment, and non-human ecologies. Sound is energy in
vibration: its medium is air, water, or solid matter, transmitting information for
a receiver about how it came into being. This forms the fundamental basis for
interactions between diverse ecosystems of plants and animals. Because sound
is both temporal and spatial, it blurs the distinctions between concepts of time
and space. And sound resonates beyond the immediacy of something physi-
cally sensed and heard in the present moment, to an existence in memory, a
trigger for future psychological and associative meanings and behaviours.
Using an experimental approach to my artistic practice, I combine these
different forms of knowledge-making with understanding of our environ-
ment, the technological and the intuitive. The ORCiM research group refers
to the centrality of experimentation in artistic practice as “encompass[ing] the
actions that an artist undertakes in developing and constantly renewing per-
sonal artistic identity and expertise” (Orpheus Institute 2010). I consider the
artworks that I create not as an end in themselves, but as a process that demands
extensive research and experimentation, and which subsequently inflects ideas
or uncovers new knowledge to feed into further experiments. My practical
work is interwoven with research work, each informing the other in constant
feedback loops. Such a process—between reflection and creation, analytical
steps and intuitive leaps, learning to use instruments and listening techniques
in both the field and in the studio—is also characteristic of techno-intuition.
Here I offer an approach to working that will allow others to experiment, and
to experience such “extended techniques.” The following sections will discuss
examples from artists and musicians, including myself, who actively research
the area between technology, intuition, and the sonic environment.
Techno-intuition, as a research paradigm, is a work in process. It recognises
the implicit coexistence between the creation of meaning and the technologies
we use to sense and know (and navigate through) our environment. Through
my artistic practice, I explore such a merging between corporeal and techno-
logical modes of perception. Here, I will approach it from different angles,
first at a bodily human scale, using walking, swimming, and sailing as exam-
ples of immediate ways to experience environments and of how technology
can engage with this. I will then examine a changing relationship between the
body, space, and the technology of musical instruments, introducing ideas of
expanded environmental instruments. The following section investigates that
which is beyond our immediate experience by exploring both technological
and intuitive ways of making the inaudible audible and the unconscious con-
scious. And finally, I introduce examples of embodied techno-intuitive naviga-
tion using sound.

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 Techno-Intuition

W a lK i ng , s a i li ng , s WiM M i ng : eMbo d ied experien c e oF

Mo veM ent i n envi r o nM ent

Walking, swimming, and sailing relate one physically and mentally to the space
and medium being moved through. What Rebecca Solnit (2001, 291) refers to
as a “constellation” of body-imagination-world, is an experiential, first-person
relationship to the environment generated by walking (or swimming) through
it. This constellation is central to the “sound walks” by R. Murray Schafer and
Hildegard Westerkamp of the Acoustic Ecology group, begun in the 1970s,
and subsequent generations of sound artists such as Christina Kubisch, whose
Electrical Walks (2003) make inaudible electromagnetic fields audible via a
headphone instrument. In particular, Westerkamp concentrates on height-
ened listening to environmental sounds within the environment and to identi-
fying group behaviours that develop out of this state of awareness when being
guided predominantly by sound rather than sight (Westerkamp 2010). Through
walking, participants explore these everyday soundworlds, activating the con-
stellation of body-imagination-world.2
Sailing demands a more complex relationship between the body, the instru-
ment, and the environment. The boat is an extension of the sailor—in effect an
instrument—and the art of sailing combines the ability to control this instru-
ment with complex, unpredictable, and ever-changing environmental factors.
My experiences with sailing laid the foundation for further experiments, in
particular the importance of interacting with navigation technologies to build
meaning when moving through an environment. Examples from my own work
include Symphony no. 2: Sargasso Sail across the Bermuda Triangle (1997), Navigating
by Circles / Sextant (2007), Taking Soundings: Anchor (2008), Fishing for Sound (2010),
and Pink Noise (2010). Swim (2011) (an installation made up of single-channel
video and stereo sound) is recorded from an ocean swimmer’s viewpoint. I cap-
ture the rhythm of breathing and physical motion as the sound and image alter-
nate between above and below water, cutting through the surface, exploring
the physicality of sound through a direct involvement with the sea. The sound
work You Me Swim Blackbird (2012) collages “the sound of a body inside a body,
a body crossing from water to air, and a body calling through air” (Harris 2011).
These projects lead me to ask: How can I as an artist use technologies (instru-
ments) to expand, complement, and question such experiential relationships
to the environment rather than push them away? Through my artistic exper-
iments with sound, could I generate techno-intuitive relationships to our
environments?

i ns tr uM ents i n th e envi r o n Men t 1:

“i ns i de -o ut i ns tr u M ent ”
I think of a musical instrument in terms of energy and sonic vibration, and
am particularly interested in the impact of instruments and sound technology

2 Walking as a means of embodied experience of movement in an environment has featured prominently

in my own work since Walk for an Absent Public (1995).

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 Yolande Harris

on ways of listening and understanding environmental context. In my article

“Inside-Out Instrument” (Harris 2006), I describe the reconfiguration of the
traditional relationship between a musician’s instrument, body, and technol-
ogy. Since the development of the loudspeaker and electronic sound technol-
ogy, sound is commonly detached from the source of the performer’s body and
instrument, in effect becoming dispersed in a space surrounding the musician.
In my article, the traditionally intimate relationship between body, musical
instrument, and sound production is turned inside-out so that the instrument
can in effect be inhabited rather than held.3 Conceptually, my own instrument
design is based on facilitating techno-intuition by absorbing technologies into
an intuitive way of moving through one’s environment.
As a form of energy, sound resonates between interacting elements of com-
plex ecologies. In many cases, human relationships to the environment drawn
through sound are profoundly bound up with technology. In order to hear,
collect, transform, study, analyse, and intervene through sound, special instru-
ments must be designed. Such a hearing-through-technology raises questions
as to how these instruments enable as well as inhibit forms of knowledge.
While it is important to recognise the implicit coexistence between the crea-
tion of meaning and the technologies we use to sense and know (and navigate
through) our environment, the notion of techno-intuition explores a more
balanced merging between corporeal and technological modes of perception.
I consider an expanded notion of “instrument” that emphasises context—an
understanding of one’s place as an element within the larger environmental
system. Blending the instrument with intuition through physical practice, lis-
tening, and experimentation, promotes an attitude to both instrument devel-
opment and artistic production that, by being more attuned to and aware of
context, is potentially more sustainable and sensitive to environment.

i ns tr u Ments in th e en viro n M en t 2:
s h i p navi gatio n an d u n d erWater explo ratio n

Consider an instrument as situated within and responsive to a larger envi-

ronment.4 Recent research into ship navigation and submarine cartography
offers further examples that support a conception of an intuitive relationship
between the body, instrument, and environment. Although not specifically
concerned with sound, cognitive scientist Edwin Hutchins (1995) investi-
gates group collaboration in coastal navigation on a large ship. His research
emphasises the importance and the abilities of complex group interactions
to develop, absorbing technological interfaces when relating to one another
within ever-changing environmental surroundings. Anthropologist Stefan
Helmreich (2007) describes similar intuitive collaborations between scientists

3 See also Bongers and Harris (2002).

4 David Dunn (2012) has developed a series of analogue circuits that produce autonomous interlinking
sound behaviours. He placed these devices in an isolated environment and recorded the sonic interac-
tions that developed with other species.

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 Techno-Intuition

immersed in a varied soundscape of navigational aids, background music, and

verbal communications as they map the seabed in research submarine Alvin.
From this perspective a more expansive notion of instrument can be developed.
By extending our sensory and cognitive capabilities through navigational and
scientific research instruments, often in group collaboration, one can imagine
the emergence of an environmental or even “submarine cyborg” (ibid., 627)
that can experience extreme and uninhabitable environments, such as the
deep sea, through the extensions of technology.5

i ns tr uM ents i n the envi r on M en t 3:

lea r ni ng F r oM o th er s pec ies

By extending our perception beyond the human audible range—by making the
otherwise inaudible audible—we can, for example, learn much about the cen-
tral role of sound in underwater ecologies (see Harris 2012). Alvin Lucier is an
example of a composer who has experimented with such concepts. Quasimodo,
the Great Lover (1970) and Vespers (1968), the first inspired by the humpback
whale’s ability to send sound over very long distances, and the second inspired
by the bat’s ultrasound capabilities, explore not simply the sounds themselves
but the processes by which such sounds act within the environments they
inhabit. Learning more about how other species use sounds within their habi-
tats may inspire ideas on techno-intuitive approaches for our own interaction
within the environment.

M aK i ng th e i na udi ble a ud ible an d th e u n c o n sc io u s

c o ns c i o us

Going beyond the body’s physiological boundaries, and therefore beyond walk-
ing, swimming, and sailing, what is not physically perceptible can be brought
into consciousness either through technical or mental means. For example,
technological methods of making the inaudible audible such as sonification
and audification (as in my work Fishing for Sound, 2010) can be complemented by
practices for revealing aspects of the unconscious such as psychological EMDR
treatment using sound, dream work, and Deep Listening techniques (Oliveros
2005). Combining such approaches to sound and listening can expand our
awareness of physical and mental boundaries that we set for ourselves. This,
in turn, can help us to appreciate our place within larger interacting ecologies.
Sound can be used to create embodied experiences of technically or mentally
mediated aspects of environments. Through the manipulation of sonifications
and field recordings in performance, sound can conjure up a sense of place that
physically touches our bodies and expands our minds.6 I addressed these issues
in a solo show of combined installations and performances from my Scorescapes
series in the Sonic Unconscious program at the Issue Project Room, New York,

5 Ship navigation (Edwin Hutchins 1995), submarine cartography (Stefan Helmreich 2007).
6 This was my aim in Fishing for Sound (2010) and S.W.A.M.P. (2009–11).

169
 Yolande Harris

in 2012. The underwater sounds in Fishing for Sound (2010) include insect, fish,
dolphin, and human-made sounds (engines, depth finders, and anchors) col-
lected by a simple underwater microphone. Listening via a hydrophone to the
soundscape beneath the apparently idyllic surface of the video of a turquoise
sea brings to consciousness elements of the environment we otherwise would
not see or hear. The electronic sounds of sonified GPS data resonate with the
accompanying video looking through the viewfinder of a sextant on board a
boat. All these connect in the mind, where a clicking sound moving from left
to right once per second refers to EMDR psychotherapy treatments, which
use sound to help a patient navigate through associations and memories.7
Fishing for Sound creates a sea of spatial connections between these disparate
spatial phenomena—underwater, in the mind, and from outer space—weav-
ing sounds from marine environments, psychotherapy, and sonified navigation
satellites. Common to each of these is a mass of background noise—of envi-
ronment, memory, and information—where listening is like fishing for sounds.

t ec h no - i ntu itive n avig atio n 1:

s un r un s un : s atellite s o u n d ers
Taking Soundings (2007–8) and Sun Run Sun (2008–9) explore historical, con-
temporary, and animal navigations through sound. They question, What does
it mean to navigate? What are the bodily experiences of finding one’s way? And
how do different modes of navigation shape our understanding of the envi-
ronment we are moving through? Sun Run Sun was a series of works that son-
ified GPS data to provoke a re-experience of navigation and a renewed sense
of embodied location in environment. It included an installation and a set of
hand-held instruments to sonify navigation data as one walks, their sounds lis-
tened to on headphones. Sun Run Sun strives “towards a hybrid between . . . two
ways of knowing, between navigation through technology and intuitive embod-
ied navigation—a techno-intuition” (Harris and Dekker 2009). The handheld
instruments, the Satellite Sounders, have been called “an intuitive navigator”
that “provides people with new experiences not just of space but also of body
and mind” (Dekker 2010, 3). The result of such an experience with this work has
been described by one commentator as follows: “a different sensitivity to one’s
immediate surroundings and one’s position on Earth arises. . . . A performative
practice is necessary in order to understand this new logic of our current calcu-
lative world” (Zaragozá 2010, 31).

7 EMDR (eye-movement desensitisation and reprocessing) is a technique used in psychotherapy for

treating post-traumatic stress disorder.

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 Techno-Intuition

t ec h no - i ntui ti ve navi gatio n 2:

F i eld r ec o r di ng , t r o pi c a l s to rM , an d th e d isplac ed
s o und W a l Ks
Field recordings aim to represent environments audibly, but they often
neglect the complex layering of spaces and times inherent in the recording
and replaying of sounds. I had the opportunity to address this issue from two
complementary angles with an installation and an outdoor sound walk at the
Cage100 exhibition at Leipzig Contemporary Art Museum in 2012. The video
and sound installation Tropical Storm creates a room full of rain; it is loud and
immersive yet always present in the here and now. It internalises the environ-
ment of a storm, commenting on current practices of field recording and dis-
placed sounds. As the complement to the installation, my Displaced Sound Walks
(Orpheus Institute, Ghent, 2010, and Leipzig, 2012) further the process of
hyper-aware listening while walking. Using a collaborative, workshop-like cre-
ative process, I play with pre-recording the ambient sounds of predetermined
routes, “mak[ing] the participant extremely aware of the functioning of his [or
her] body when feeling and perceiving reality” (Colpani 2010, 55).

c o nc ludi ng tho ugh ts

Techno-intuition builds on a desire to be more involved with our multiple envi-

ronments and to create deeper understandings of our interactions with them.
I propose to attempt this not only by direct physical interaction, but also by
a level of commitment to listening and instrument design, using a first per-
son perspective and multi-sensory video and sound, to draw one into environ-
ments that are unfamiliar. Such an experimental approach can, I believe, move
us closer to redefining the role of composers, sound artists, and sonic ecolo-
gists as activators of a sustainable attitude towards the sonic environment, one
that is less passive than the genre of field recording and more immersed in and
committed to our environment.

References
Bongers, Bert, and Harris, Yolande. 2002. “A Dekker, Annet. 2010. “New Ways of Seeing:
Structured Instrument Design Approach: Artistic Usage of Locative Media.” In
The Video-Organ.” In Proceedings of the DAC 09: After Media, Embodiment and
International Conference on New Interfaces for Context: Proceedings of the Digital Arts
Musical Expression (NIME 2002). Accessed and Culture Conference, 2009, University
28 September 2013. http://www.nime. of California, Irvine, edited by Simon
org/proceedings/2002/nime2002_018. Penny. Berkeley: University of California
pdf. Press. http://www.escholarship.org/
Colpani, Marta. 2010. “New Media Shaping uc/item/64w0d7tz#page-1. Accessed 1
of Perception of Space and Perception of October 2013.
the Body: The Impact of New Media on Dunn, David. 2012. “Thresholds and Fragile
our Experience of Space and of the Body.” States.” Möbius Journal 1 (1). Accessed
MA thesis, University of Amsterdam. 28 September 2013. https://www.
Accessed 29 September 2013. http://dare. moebiusjournal.org/pubs/8.
uva.nl/document/189159

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 Yolande Harris

Harris, Yolande. 2006. “Inside-Out 622–41.

Instrument.” In “Bodily Instruments Hutchins, Edwin. 1995. Cognition in the Wild.
and Instrumental Bodies,” special issue, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Contemporary Music Review 25 (1–2): Oliveros, Pauline. 2005. Deep Listening: A
151–62. Composer’s Sound Practice. Lincoln, NE:
———. 2011. “You Me Swim Blackbird.” iUniverse.
SoundCloud. Accessed 27 September Orpheus Institute. 2010. Artistic
2013. https://soundcloud.com/ Experimentation in Music, 2010–2013
icalondon/yolande-harris-you-me- (brochure). Ghent: Orpheus Institute.
swim. Published in conjunction with Also available at http://www.
the exhibition Soundworks, shown at the orpheusinstituut.be/en/research-centre-
Institute of Contemporary Art, London. orcim/research-projects.
———. 2012. “Understanding Underwater: Solnit, Rebecca. 2001. Wanderlust: A History of
The Art and Science of Interpreting Walking. New York: Verso.
Whale Sounds.” Interference: A Journal Westerkamp, Hildegard. 2010. “What’s in
of Audio Culture, vol. 2. Accessed a Soundwalk?” Filmed at Sonic Acts
10 November 2012. http://www. Festival XIII, Amsterdam, 2010. Vimeo
interferencejournal.com/articles/a-sonic- video, 33:28. Accessed 26 September
geography/understanding-underwater. 2013. http://vimeo.com/12479152.
Harris, Yolande, and Annet Dekker. Wikipedia. 2013. “Eye Movement
2009. “Aiming for Dead Reckoning: A Desensitization and Reprocessing.”
Conversation between Yolande Harris Wikipedia. Accessed 29 September. http://
and Annet Dekker.” In Navigating en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_
E-Culture, edited by Cathy Brickwood desensitization_and_reprocessing.
and Annet Dekker, 41–52. Amsterdam: Zaragozá, Susana. 2010. “SPACE, but not
Virtueel Platform. as we know it: Locative Mapping and
Helmreich, Stefan. 2007. “An Anthropologist Non-Representational Geographies.”
Underwater: Immersive Soundscapes, MA thesis, University of Amsterdam.
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Ethnography.” American Ethnologist 34 (4): uva.nl/document/184424.

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Section III
Experimenting
with Materials
in the Processes
of Music-Making
Any experimental approach to music necessitates an examination of materials,
and poses complex questions about the relationships between material, form,
and the process of creation and re-creation. This section focuses on the evalu-
ation of unfamiliar musical situations. The authors pose diverse challenges to
the established interactions of performance, composition and improvisation.
Sometimes this takes the form of viewing a familiar composer (or other form of
artist) in a new light, or of reflecting upon the susceptibility of a whole musical
tradition to an experimental approach. What, for example, if we approach the
playing of jazz standards from an experimental point of view, as discussed by
Steve Tromans?
The materials of music also include those traces that have come down to us
from earlier eras, whether historical materials that are over a hundred years old
(manuscripts, printed editions, personal reminiscences, sound recordings), as
discussed in the article on Brahms performance by Anna Scott; or much more
recent, in cases where the original performers may be still very much alive and
willing to reminisce, as seen in Luk Vaes’s herculean efforts to reconstruct
experimental works by Kagel from some forty years ago, and in Paulo de Assis’s
reconstructive and creative work on Luigi Nono. But historical sources can mis-
lead as well as inform us; none of these documentary traces speaks unambig-
uously for itself. In the articles in this section we see these materials join with
acts of the creative imagination, whether the aim be to construct, to recon-
struct, or to deconstruct.
The work of John Cage, further discussed in this section, provokes the essen-
tial question of what exactly is the material of music, and how we should best
engage with it. Some radical answers emerge in the work of Larry Polansky, who
writes about three recent examples of his own experimental practice in which
the concept of “material” is enlarged to include the performer’s personal
preparation for performance as an integral part of the experience of a work of
music. His title “what if ?”—which is also a personal aesthetic—is equally rele-
vant to William Brooks’s creative response to the recitation of poetry, specifi-
cally to the idiosyncratic practices of the Irish poet and playwright W. B. Yeats.
Hans Roels, observing the creative processes of eight of his fellow composers, is
led to ask searching questions about what exactly constitutes experimentalism,
both in the making of a single piece and in terms of thought processes that fill
a whole life. And Nicholas Brown reflects on his own practice as a composer
interested in wider themes in philosophy.

What i F ? – l a rr Y P o lanSKY
Larry Polansky’s paper discusses three of his own recent pieces from one of
the classic aesthetic standpoints of experimental music: the simple question
“what if ?.” This standpoint, characteristic of the work of his teacher James
Tenney, takes the view of an act of composition as being the testing of a hypoth-
esis in sound. This is a truly experimental approach in that the outcome, as
Cage famously argued, cannot be foreseen at the outset. Polansky discusses a
piece that flips the notational axes of pitch and time, with considerable conse-

174
quences for the performer; a piece that necessarily requires almost three years
to prepare; and a piece for which the pianist has to learn the rudiments of sign
language.

h i s to r i c a l p r ec edents F o r a rtistic r esearc h in M u sic :

t he c a s e o F W i lli a M b utl er y eats – w illiam B ro oKS
This paper argues the case for the practice of chanting texts, as in the work
of the Irish writer W. B. Yeats, as an early form of artistic experimentation in
music. Yeats was inspired by, and came to collaborate with, the actress Florence
Farr in his adventures in this twilight world between speech and music, leav-
ing numerous documentary traces of their practice in writings, musical nota-
tions and sound recordings. Brooks then describes a recent work of his own
that responds to Yeats’s concepts (famously outlined in his essay “Speaking
to the Psaltery”) by adopting aspects of his method and even his spirit, but
deliberately disregarding the actual traces of Yeats’s own work—his scores and
artefacts. The result is a novel form of composition-as-research, taking a cen-
tury-old inspiration and finding in it open-ended, “epistemic things” (in the
terminology of Rheinberger).

c agei an i nter penetr ati o n an d th e n ature –a rti Fic e

d i s ti nc ti o n – S te Ve t rom a n S
Cage defined interpenetration as “an incalculable infinity of causes and
effects” in which “each and every thing . . . is related to each and every other
thing” (Nyman 1999, 65). This paper is concerned with exploring the research
implications of Cageian interpenetration, in terms of certain of the philo-
sophical notions found in the writings of Deleuze (alone, and with Guattari).
In contrast to the distinction that language allows us to make between per-
former, instrument, composer, score, audience, and environment, actual lived
experience of performance events bears testament to no such clear-cut cat-
egorisations. Deleuze and Guattari wrote of the event that it is “inseparable
from the state of affairs, bodies, and lived reality in which it is actualised or
brought about” (1994, 159). Crucially, regarding the concerns of this paper, they
added: “But we can also say the converse” (ibid.). On this view, Cageian inter-
penetration would be more in line with the natural state-of-play of an event
of performance than an artificial compositional strategy—as much as a nature/
artifice distinction can, or indeed should, be maintained. Steve Tromans pro-
poses that Cage’s interpenetrative compositional assemblages can operate in
practice-as-research terms, where the subject of that research investigation is
temporal becoming—i.e., the process in which things exist/persist in time. He
argues that Cageian interpenetration draws our attention to a much larger, and
ongoing, interpenetrative process; one that has implications for how we under-
stand our everyday experiences of the world around us, and our place/s within
it.

175
 r evi s i ti ng l u ig i n o n o ’ s su FFered , seren e Waves – P au lo De
a S S iS
This paper reflects upon the author’s long-standing involvement with the
music of Luigi Nono, specifically on the composition .....sofferte onde serene...
for piano and tape. Through a close examination of Nono’s sketches, and
through the preparation and realisation of his own orchestration of the piece,
Paulo de Assis brings both a performer’s perspective and a scholar’s insight
to bear on this well-known yet enigmatic score, and its various possibilities in
performance.

o n K agel ’ s e xperi Men tal s o u n d p ro d u c ers :

a n i llus tr ated i n tervieW With a h isto ric al p er Fo r Mer –
l u K V a eS
Luk Vaes’s paper derives from an extensive research project, still in progress, in
which he examines the problems and perplexities inherent in making perform-
ing versions today of the experimental works of Mauricio Kagel from the 1960s
and 1970s, works for which there is often no definitive score but a plethora of
research material in the form of (occasionally enigmatic) sketches, drawings,
diagrams, pieces of verbal or musical notation, recordings, and so forth. In this
paper Vaes presents an interview with Theodor Ross, a musician who worked
closely with Kagel in the first performances of several of these works, includ-
ing Acustica, which is here the focus of their discussion. Far from solving all the
problems, Vaes’s detailed conversation with this particular historical performer
serves to show how complex is the task of reconstructing the actions and atti-
tudes of Kagel’s work, the realisation of which today must involve a combina-
tion of solid research and the exercise of creative intelligence.

c o M po s i ng as a W ay oF d o in g p h ilo so ph y – n ic h o laS
G. B row n
Between 2005 and 2009, Nicholas Brown devised strategies for creating new
musical works by investigating the conventions and practices of classical music
in relation to wider themes in philosophy. He was interested in seeing whether
the act of composing could be reframed as a way of understanding what it is we
do when we “do” music and how musical experiences affect and help us as we
move through our daily lives. This article comprises an account of two of his
processes of thought concerning classical music and its conventions that led to
the creation of new work.

c yc les oF e xperi Men tatio n an d th e c reative p ro c ess oF

M us i c c oM positio n – h an S r o el S
In 2011 the composer Hans Roels embarked on a research project involving
eight contemporary composers whom he observed in the process of creating
new works. He was struck by one particular composer, his Flemish contempo-

176
rary Frederik Neyrinck, who at first appeared to be composing without exper-
imenting. Through a process of observation and discussion of the working
process with Neyrinck himself, Roels was led to reflect upon exactly what we
mean in talking about experimentation in the process of composing, both with
regard to a specific act of composition and in the context of the larger reper-
tory of working practices developed by a composer over a period of years.

c ha ngi ng s o unds , c ha ng in g M ean in g s : h o W a rtistic

e x per i M entati o n o pens u p th e F ield o F b rah Ms
p erF o rM a nc e p r ac ti c e – a n n a S c o tt
Anna Scott’s paper begins from a strange paradox in the world of historical-
ly-informed performance: the apparent reluctance of contemporary pianists to
learn from the surviving recordings of Brahms’s piano music, as played by his
own contemporaries and students. This reluctance seems to fly in the face of
practices derived from study of the recordings of slightly later composers (such
as Elgar) by historically-minded performers, all too keen to learn from that par-
ticular encounter. Scott describes in detail the testimonies of those who heard
Brahms play, such as Eugenie Schumann, and examines the recorded traces of
Brahms students like Adelina De Lara to reconstruct a sense of the way Brahms
would have heard his own music, posing the question of how much longer musi-
cians can justify protecting what today we consider to be historically-informed
Brahms performance practice from the practices of Brahms and his circle.

e x per i M ents i n t i M e : M us ic -r esearc h With J aZZ s tandards

i n th e p r oF es s i o na l c o nte xt – S teV e t ro man S

In this paper Steve Tromans draws on his own practice as a jazz musician to
examine the manifold possibilities in approaching jazz standards from an
experimental basis, while remaining viable as a professional performer on the
jazz circuit. He discusses Bergson’s theories of memory, time and perception,
and Deleuze’s reading of Kant, in his focus on the performer as experimenter
rather than interpreter.

e c o s o ni c s : M us i c a nd b i r d so n g , e n d s an d b eg in n in g s –
S te P hen P reS ton
Stephen Preston’s career as a flautist began in the 1970s in the era of period
instrument practice and the emergence of historically informed performance.
He is also a choreographer and researcher into historical dance practices. This
paper summarises his more recent investigations into birdsong as a model for
developing new techniques and improvisational practice with the Baroque
flute. To this practice he gives the name “ecosonics,” an approach to improvisa-
tion “where human and animal sound making might merge as music.”

177
 what if ?
Larry Polansky
University of California, Santa Cruz

I often write pieces with some kind of question in mind. That question can be
just about anything, but sometimes it is simply “what if ?”
Some musical ideas beg to be pursued for their own sake, on their own
terms, just to see what happens. Asking the right questions—fecund, clear,
as profound and ramifying as possible—is important. But the hard work for a
composer is to ask elegantly, poetically, transparently, and above all, musically.
There are many interesting questions, far fewer interesting pieces.
If a question is pursued with integrity and confidence, the consequences can
lead to difficult pieces: difficult for the composer to realise, difficult for the
performer to play, difficult for others to understand. It’s true that curiosity can
cause problems, but for a composer a lack of curiosity is the more serious prob-
lem. If we are to “keep it new” we must take the consequences. Change is hard,
but it is everything. The hope is that if we keep sticking our noses where they
don’t belong, they will, eventually, detect something new.

t hr ee pi ec es

I include three of my own pieces as examples: Christian Music (four rounds)

(2007), days, weeks, months, years (for solo pianist) (2006), and “for piano left
hand” (#14 from the piano piece ‫[ רבדמב‬B’midbar] [Numbers]) (2008).1
The idea of Christian Music is simple: what if the conventional axes of musical
notation—x and y, pitch as a function of time—were reversed? If we “flip” the
axes, say, displaying time as a function of pitch, difference and similarities in
pitch become those in time and vice versa. Simultaneity in time becomes equal-
ity of pitch (and vice versa). A steady rhythmic pulse becomes a chord.
The pencil sketch for Christian Music shows this clearly. The “melody” in black
noteheads is written in the conventional way, left-to-right, with time along
the y-axis. Each “box” is something like a measure. Superimposed on that is
the melody in white noteheads transposed by a ninety-degree rotation (coun-
ter-clockwise). In other words, the white-notehead melody is written as if the
black-notehead melody were rotated to the left, and written in a 2 × 3 grid (or
“two measures” per line) rather than the 3 × 2 of the original. Two representa-
tions of pitch versus time (or time versus pitch) combine to make something

1 A video illustration of ‫[ רבדמב‬B’midbar] [Numbers]) may be found online at http://www.orpheusinstituut.

be/anthology/repository

179
 Larry Polansky

new, interpretable in a number of ways. It’s a round at the two-measures, and at

the pitch/time inversion (rotation) as well.

Fig. 1
The final version of the piece consists of four postcards (designed in collabo-
ration with Laura Grey). Different colours designate different voices of each
round. Five hundred postcards were made, which I give away. Each set of four is
given a unique “numbering” (out of five hundred) that has nothing to do with
the order of the “edition,” but refers uniquely to the recipient.
The three two-part rounds are successive ninety-degree rotations (inversions
around the axes to different quadrants). The four-part round combines all
four rotations. No indications are given to performers—time and pitch (and
anything else) may be realised in any way they choose, based on the notation.
Apparent pitch or time simultaneities, when the score is considered in conven-
tional notation, are free to be treated as such, even though they result indirectly
from the notational idea. The lyrics (a homage to my friend and bandmate
Christian Wolff) may be sung or not. If they are sung (these are rounds, after
all) the idea of text occurring in the vertical is completely open to performer
interpretation. In Christian Music, I ask the musicians to ponder my own ques-
tion, the “what if ” of the piece, in their performance.
days, weeks, months, years requires a daily activity of the performer, like practis-
ing. But it precludes what is most often the direct result of practising: perfor-
mance. Like many of the most important things in life, this piece is difficult in
the long term, relatively straightforward in the short. Both Christian Music and
days . . . are quite personal. But the intent in the latter, inherent in the communi-
cation between composer and performer, is not only one of respect, friendship,

180

Figure 1. Polansky, Christian Music, pencil sketch

 what if?

and I hope, good humour, but also an audacious challenge to follow the rules: it
asks the performer to follow an almost three year process. Since several things
change along differing time cycles, the performer must carefully keep track. To
me, the piece is a hybrid of diary, meditation, and ordinary daily instrumental
practice. By necessity, any realisation is a private one.
“For piano left hand” is from a larger solo piano piece, ‫רבדמב‬, commissioned
by Sarah Cahill as part of a collection of anti-war pieces. ‫ רבדמב‬consists of sev-
enteen short pieces (in three sections of 5–7–5). Each is optionally preceded by
a short, spoken text. ‫ רבדמב‬may be performed in its entirety, or its individual
pieces may be done in any combination. Several of the pieces are songs (the
pianist sings), one is a round (involving the audience singing), one is a “piano
lesson” (with volunteer pianists from the audience), and one can involve any
number of other instruments to play with the pianist. Most of the pieces require
the pianist to do something out of the ordinary.
My reason for this structure was simple: if we truly hope to not have war, we
can’t just do what we usually do. We are xenophobic by nature. How we modu-
late that fundamental part of our makeup with the intelligence also handed to
us by evolution is what might make it possible, as the round (#13) in ‫ רבדמב‬says,
to “put our hands together/and try to make something better.”
In #14, “for piano left hand,” the pianist is asked to learn the rudiments of a
new language: sign. This comes from my own experience: I have been involved
in the culture of American Sign Language (ASL) for the past ten years. But the
pianist may learn any sign language (they are as different from one another as
spoken languages are). The pianist is asked to find a teacher (preferably Deaf)
and learn how to do a few signs (“dead,” “where,” etc.), simple spelling (for
names and places), numbering, and dates. These can generally be done with
one hand, so the piece is a song sung by the pianist in sign, accompanied by the
left hand. Signing usually favours the dominant hand, so a left-handed pianist
might play this piece with the right hand. Only one performer (Rory Cowal) has
performed this particular piece (#14). He found a Deaf teacher to instruct him
in ASL, and not only enjoyed that experience, but also became friends with this
teacher, someone from a radically different community than his own. Rory told
me he was transformed by the experience.
In wonderful polarity, music can be said to be sound without meaning, sign
to be meaning without sound. The question “What if we could have music in
sign?” was part of the impetus for this piece, as was “What if a pianist’s hands
did meaningful things other than playing the piano, or even making sound?”

Hanover, NH
13 February 2013

181
 Historical Precedents for
Artistic Research in Music:
The Case of William Butler Yeats

William Brooks
University of York; Orpheus Research Centre in Music

It is treacherous to argue that artistic research in music must necessarily con-

form to a particular model or template. Every research undertaking seems typ-
ically to construct its own method, its own rationale. Nonetheless, there are
some properties that seem to be common to all such projects. First, they nec-
essarily entail contributions from artists (musicians) practising their craft—
contributions not just of data (which suffices for research on or into musical
practice) but also of insights and judgments (required for research in or through
music practice). Second, the results of the research include not only discourse
about the problem but also discourse in the problem: the research is validated,
in part, by new art (new performance) that it has brought into being. Third,
artistic research is typically situated in a special environment—a laboratory,
in some sense, with received or newly devised tools (instruments)—and in a
community of fellow practitioners who are qualified to critique a new art with
some authority. Fourth, the research is also situated conceptually, in a research
framework often drawn from other disciplines, such as psychology, philoso-
phy, or history. And finally, the research inevitably leaves a trace of some kind
beyond the artwork itself: it somehow establishes (often but not necessarily in
writing) its purposes, its methods, and its implications.
Often artistic research is interdisciplinary; it is entered obliquely, as a con-
sequence of a problem or proposition arising first in another art form or sci-
ence. A physicist, having turned to instrument design to test certain principles
of acoustics, asks performers to play his (re)designed device; the performers,
perhaps working together with composers, produce a new repertoire that val-
idates the artistic usefulness of the research that has been done. A psycholo-
gist investigating the workings of memory chooses musical scores as a limiting
field; performers, initially mere subjects, gain insights from the act of providing
data that allow the creation of new performance strategies, new constructions
of musical continuities. A poet, imagining a distinctive oral delivery of verse,
engages musicians and instrument-builders to implement his ideas; a strangely
evocative new sonic art is born.

183
 William Brooks

The last of these examples is in fact a brief description of the work under-
taken by William Butler Yeats, most evident in the years 1890 to 1910, but in
fact extending from his earliest days until his death.1 In what follows I want first
to trace Yeats’s project briefly, emphasising its relationship to artistic research,
and then to turn to its usefulness today, with a particular instance taken from
my own work; this will lead to some final remarks about “conclusions” in this
field of endeavour.

Yeats recalled chanting poetry even as a youth: “Like every other poet, I spoke
verses in a kind of chant when I was making them; and sometimes, when I was
alone on a country road, I would speak them in a loud chanting voice, and feel
that if I dared I would speak them in that way to other people” (Yeats [1902]
1903, 18–19). As he grew older he did dare to chant more openly, at first only
in the safe confines of the Rhymers’ Club, a loose association of poets and lit-
erati (Schuchard 2008, 15–16). The turn towards truly public utterances—per-
formances, even—came in the late 1880s, when Yeats was in his early twenties.
And it was profoundly and eternally associated with his encounters with two
extraordinary women.
The first was the aspiring actress Florence Farr, recently separated from her
husband and already a member of some of the mystical societies that Yeats
would come to embrace. A paradigmatic “new woman,” she would go on to
an extraordinary life: actor, magician, writer, educator; extravagantly casual in
dress and manner, the mistress of George Bernard Shaw, an early champion of
Ibsen (Johnson 1975). But in 1890 that life was just beginning, in part through
her association with the Bedford Park enclave of radical artists and writers.
There, in June, she appeared in a play by John Todhunter, who was also inter-
ested in the declamation of verse, and the beauty of her voice and reading cap-
tivated Yeats entirely. In reviewing the performance, Yeats wrote that she “won
universal praise with her striking beauty and subtle gesture and fine delivery of
the verse. . . . I do not know that I have any word too strong to express my admi-
ration for its grace and power. . . . I have never heard verse better spoken” (Yeats
1989, 39). And later he would recall that “she had three great gifts, a tranquil
beauty like that of Demeter’s image near the British Museum reading room
door, and an incomparable sense of rhythm and a beautiful voice, the seeming
natural expression of the image” (Yeats 1922, 11). Yeats and Farr would go on to
a twenty-year collaboration to explore, develop, and promote the art of chant-
ing poetry.
Yeats had met Farr well before her appearance at Bedford Park, and indica-
tions are that he was quite infatuated with her (Schuchard 2008, 18; Johnson
1975, 42). But she was utterly eclipsed by the second woman to appear: Maud
Gonne, who arrived on his father’s doorstep on 30 January 1889. Of her Yeats

1 Except as otherwise noted, all biographical information is drawn from Schuchard’s (2008) exceptionally
fine study.

184
 Historical Precedents for Artistic Research in Music

was famously to write: “I was twenty-three years old when the troubling of my
life began. I had heard from time to time . . . of a beautiful girl who had left
the society of the Viceregal Court for Dublin nationalism. . . . Presently she
drove up to our house in Bedford Park . . . I had never thought to see in a living
woman so great beauty. It belonged to famous pictures, to poetry, to some leg-
endary past” (Yeats 1972, 40). Yeats’s love for Maud is one of the great literary
love stories: over the next two decades, he would propose—and be rejected—
numerous times; and for, and to, Maud he would write some of his most famous
poems and plays. But that too was in the future. Yeats, at the age of twenty-five,
had found two companions that would sustain and frustrate him for twenty
years; and during those same twenty years, he would develop the practice of
“chanting” in their company and with others. The nucleus of an artistic com-
munity had been formed.
The community’s conceptual framework arose from Yeats’s other abiding
interests. The first and most enduring was the pursuit of a mythical antiquity—
that of Ireland, above all, but also of Europe, ancient Greece, even Egypt. It is
not coincidence that Yeats found in Maud “some legendary past”; for ten years
he had been collecting and publishing Irish tales and verses and speculating
about the place of the poet-bard in ancient Irish culture (Yeats 1888). And even
earlier, as a youth, he recalled that “images used to rise up before me . . . of
wild-eyed men speaking harmoniously to murmuring wires while audiences in
many-coloured robes listened, hushed and excited” (Yeats [1902] 1903, 18). For
Farr, too, “the music of speech” was “the practice of the bardic art” (Farr 1909,
[i]); a magical antiquity was to be remade through the practice of chanting:
“The mystery of sound is made manifest in words and in music. In music we
know and feel it; but we are forgetting that it lives also in words, in poetry, and
noble prose; we are overwhelmed by the chatter of those who profane it, and
the din of the traffic of the restless disturbs the peace of those who are listening
for the old magic, and watching till the new creation is heralded by the sound
of the new world” (ibid., 21).
A related interest also provided the first “laboratory” for the project. Farr,
Gonne, and (for a time) Yeats were members of a mystical society known as the
Order of the Golden Dawn. In the rituals practised there, according to Mary
Greer (1995, 128), “the vowels are sounded in a powerful way to sympathet-
ically vibrate the ether on the astral plane.” And Greer goes on to note that
“Florence’s voice—especially low, resonant, trained—was perfect.” However,
only Farr remained committed to the Order; Yeats and Gonne eventually
turned away from its fabricated mysteries to a spiritual union that was more
unsystematic and personal. At the same time, both turned their attention to a
more politically constructed antiquity: the hidden culture of Ireland as a source
for an emerging nationalism.
With this shift came a second laboratory in which to explore chanting: the
theatre. Yeats played a key role in the founding of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, and
from the start he hoped that it would serve to restore the proper practice of
declamation to the stage (Schuchard 2008, 193–94; Yeats [1907] 1916, 522–33).
Almost from the day he met Maud, Yeats conceived a play based on an Irish leg-

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end, The Countess Cathleen. Yeats intended that Maud would play Cathleen—the
personification of Ireland, much like the female “Liberty” in France—but she
turned him down. To act in plays, she wrote to him, “was very well when I was
a child . . . but now that I have undertaken a great mission I have to act accord-
ingly” (Gonne 1992, 74). And indeed, thereafter—with one important excep-
tion—Maud Gonne would turn her oratorical skills solely to proselytising on
behalf of a future Irish state. But in Yeats’s mind she was always “his” Cathleen;
and he wrote himself into the play, as well: the young, beautiful Cathleen has a
bardic suitor, Aleel, whose memorable lyrics (among them “Impetuous Heart”)
were to be chanted in the style that Yeats and Farr had developed.
When The Countess Cathleen was first produced at the Abbey Theatre on 8 May
1899, after a decade of delays and uncounted revisions, it was a kind of vale-
dictory to Maud; its conclusion, in which Cathleen-cum-Maud saves the Irish
people by selling her soul to the devil, is Yeats’s gloss on the lifework of Maud
herself. “I told her,” he recalled, “I had come to understand the tale of a woman
selling her soul to buy food for a starving people as a symbol of all souls who
lose their peace, or their fineness, or any beauty of the spirit in political service,
but chiefly of her soul that had seemed so incapable of rest” (Yeats 1972, 47).
In a strange twist of casting, the part of Aleel (representing Yeats) was taken by
Florence Farr, in a trouser role; thus Farr came to enact Yeats himself, chanting
his poetry as the ostensible suitor of Maud-Cathleen.
Yeats followed The Countess Cathleen three years later with Cathleen ni Houlihan,
a shorter, more flagrantly political work. Undaunted, he again asked Maud to
play Cathleen, and this time, through a combination of nationalism, friend-
ship, and confusion, she agreed, playing the title role, Yeats wrote, “magnifi-
cently, and with weird power” (Yeats 1994, 167, spelling regularised). Thereafter
Yeats’s theatrical interests took a somewhat different direction; but Florence
Farr remained devoted to theatrical chanting, taking the practice forward with
mixed results in plays ranging from new works to translations of classical Greek
drama (Johnson 1975, 111–22).
However, Yeats and Farr together embarked on a major effort to advance the
cause of chanting, using a third, less demanding laboratory: the lecture hall.
They began in 1902 with semi-public renditions for a largely invited audience
and eventually moved on to substantial tours throughout the British Isles.
Extensively reviewed, these events were buttressed by a number of essays
and communications by Yeats himself, providing a theoretical and practical
account of his practices. Farr, too, wrote to papers and journals expounding
her method, eventually compiling her own notices and the critical responses
in a slim volume, The Music of Speech (1909). Yeats’s key essay, “Speaking to the
Psaltery,” first appeared in 1901 and was shortly afterward incorporated in a
revised form in Ideas of Good and Evil (1903). These writings and others consti-
tute the most important contemporaneous descriptions of the theory and aes-
thetic of chanting: research reports, in effect, that would today be encumbered
by the ungraceful term “outputs.”
Farr’s engagement with chanting faded after her American tour of 1908 and
the publication of The Music of Speech. Although she continued to perform occa-

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sionally, she grew more interested in writing, and her interest in mystical prac-
tices never waned. In 1912 she left England for Ceylon to teach at a women’s
school; she never returned, dying of cancer there in 1917. After the Great War,
Yeats, too, moved on to other matters: to Irish politics, to balladry, to a new,
astringent style of poetry. But near the end of his life, in the 1930s, the bardic
impulse reawoke. The advent of broadcasting seemed to offer the opportunity
to chant directly to the people; and with broadcasting came a younger genera-
tion interested in taking up and reapplying the principles that he and Farr had
developed. An actor, Victor Clinton-Baddeley, proved willing and able to be
trained by Yeats personally; and from America came the young Harry Partch,
who had independently developed theories of declamation that greatly resem-
bled Yeats’s. These and others contributed in differing ways to a new research
team, a community working in the last of Yeats’s laboratories: the broadcast
studio. From these we have the only audio traces that remain: a handful of
poems read by Yeats and several dozen recordings made by his latter-day aco-
lytes. These are the closest we can get to the experience of Yeats’s method as
actually practised at the time.
However, these late recordings differ in many respects from Yeats’s accounts
from thirty years before. As described at the turn of the century, his work
appears to have followed a method that emerged from a solitary, “composi-
tional” use of chanting that continued throughout his life. Kathleen Tynan
(1913, 191) recalled staying at Yeats’s home when “Willie” was barely twenty: “I
used to be awakened . . . by a steady, monotonous sound rising and falling. It
was Willie chanting to himself.” Fifty years later Yeats was still chanting; his son
recalled that in his last months “he would come out on the lawn and sit in a
chair with a rug over him . . . . He’d make a low tuneless hum and his hand
would start beating time . . .” (Schuchard 2008, 400).
This chanting was research only in the most personal sense; it served Yeats
simply to conceive and test poetic possibilities, as a composer might try out
alternatives at a keyboard. It satisfied the initial conditions for artistic research,
in that it was dependent on artistic insights and produced an artistic result;
but there was no research community, no laboratory, no conceptual framework.
Its traces were left only in the poem itself, where declamatory inflections and
rhythms were vaguely expressed in punctuation and line-breaks, though no
more so than in any other verse form.
But in the 1890s chanting was transformed from a compositional tool to a
research project. The proximate cause seems to have been a visit with George
Russell (“A. E.”), who also chanted his poems. The experience persuaded Yeats
of the power of notation:

[Russell] was certain that he had written [his verses] to a manner of music, and he
had once asked somebody . . . to write out the music and play it. . . . I . . . did not often
compose to a tune, though I sometimes did, yet always to notes that could be written
down and played on [Russell’s] organ. . . . When I got to London I gave the notation
. . . to [Florence Farr], and she spoke it to me, giving my words a new quality by the
beauty of her voice. (Yeats [1902] 1903, 19–21)

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 William Brooks

Then, as Yeats relates it, he and Farr

began to wander through the wood of error. . . . we tried, persuaded by somebody

who thought quarter-tones and less intervals the especial mark of speech as distinct
from singing, to write out what we did in wavy lines. On finding something like
these lines in Tibetan music, we became so confident that we covered a large piece
of pasteboard, which now blows up my fire in the morning, with a notation in wavy
lines as a demonstration for a lecture. (ibid., 21–22)

It is important to note that the practice remained paramount: “we tried . . . to

write out what we did,” Yeats explained (my italics). It was not a question of
developing a theory to which declamation would be fit; rather, a declamation
that was empirically determined, as before, was to be communicated to others
by means of a new notation. The wavy lines resulted, and with this new docu-
mentation it became possible to test outcomes, one against the other. Yeats’s
project thus moved on from the composition of poetry to the reproducibility
of poetic delivery.
Rescue from “the wood of error” came with the addition of another mem-
ber to the research team: the early-music enthusiast and instrument-builder
Arnold Dolmetsch. Dolmetsch contributed not only a more rational, conven-
tional system of notation but also an instrument—a psaltery, designed in col-
laboration with Yeats and meant to evoke something of antiquity in its sim-
plicity and appearance. The psaltery was, first of all, a tool to ensure accurate
reproduction of a chant: by playing key notes at irregular intervals the speaker
could remain on pitch. But, secondly, it permitted a new, compositional inflec-
tion to be added to the previously unadorned voice. And this in turn invited
a new kind of experiment: which words, which syllables, are best reinforced
by a sounded note on the psaltery? Successive versions of “Impetuous Heart”
(Aleel’s lyric from The Countess Cathleen) attest to the many empirical tests that
informed the decisions—and also to Dolmetsch’s inclination to press for ever
more conventional notation (Schuchard 2008, 52, 53; Yeats [1902] 1903, 23;
Yeats 1924, 17). Florence Farr, not surprisingly, created her own method of writ-
ing, merely inscribing the letter names for pitches directly above the poetic text
(Farr 1909, 23–27).
In its full form, then, the method evolved by Yeats’s team of researchers pro-
ceeded in four stages. First, Yeats, Farr, or another practitioner would declaim
the text, going over and over it in an intuitive, exploratory way until the read-
ing stabilised into something that could be replicated consistently. Then Farr
or Dolmetsch would notate the pitches and inflections, with rhythm sketched
only vaguely. An instrument was built—or retuned—to suit the voice in ques-
tion; Dolmetsch was perfectly willing to tune the psaltery in quarter-tones if
required. Then decisions were taken—compositional decisions, really—about
the pitches that should be emphasised by means of the psaltery, and a new
score was produced. Finally this notation would be given to others for perfor-
mance, in part as a test of the accuracy of the “score,” in part to test the reading
in public performance.

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This is, very clearly, an early prototype of artistic research: raw material is
discovered through performance, then mediated by notation into something
that can be manipulated, then given new shape in a kind of composition, and
finally tested in a kind of public laboratory, where the results are assessed. Steps
one and three are very much in the domain of “art” or “creativity”; steps two
and four partake of the scientific method. Some such conflation of art and sci-
ence is very typical of many who work today in “artistic research,” not just at the
Orpheus Institute but also at many other institutions.

But the question follows: what does one do with such research, once the project
in question is completed? In particular, what does one do with research that is
so deeply grounded in the persons, the voices, the very bodies of a generation
that is long since passed? Research “in and through [musical] practice” is, after
all, intrinsically person-based; the study is not conducted from above, as in
scholarship into texts or chemistries, but from within—it entails an inextrica-
ble mix of feelings, judgments, and perceptions. It is a quintessential instance
of “radical empiricism,” as William James would say: the experience of research
is also the topic of research, and both live in the subject, who is also the author
(James 1912).
In the present instance the question arose, for me, because of a commission
for a composition. The Irish duo Sound-Weave (Nuala Hayes, actor, and Paul
Roe, clarinets) wished me to make them a piece. Funding was provided by the
Irish Arts Council, and performance support was forthcoming from Culture
Ireland. The only conditions were that the work should draw from Irish culture
or an Irish author. The combination of an actor with a monophonic instrument
brought Yeats to mind, although at that time I had only the most rudimentary
knowledge of his work; my vague impressions were give more tangible form
thanks to my colleague and friend Roger Marsh, who at this crucial moment
dropped into my pigeonhole a copy of “Speaking to the Psaltery.” The resulting
work, Everlasting Voices, turned out to be twenty-five minutes long and incorpo-
rated three channels of electroacoustic fixed-media; it was given its premiere
performances from September to December 2012 in Urbana and Chicago,
Illinois, the Orpheus Institute, Belgium, and the University of York, England.
The account that follows has a logic of its own, and it bears only a slight resem-
blance to the actual chronology of composition. But conceptually it is true to
the work, and in retrospect it seems to me to offer a useful instance of the con-
sequences that arise from revisiting artistic research that is a century old.
There are at least three possible approaches to the recreation of Yeats’s prac-
tices. One can use the existing recordings by Yeats and his later colleagues;
one can work from the musical notations made by Farr and Dolmetsch; or one
can apply Yeats’s method to altogether new readings. In composing Everlasting
Voices, I concentrated on the last of these, but it is useful to look briefly at the
first two approaches first.

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 William Brooks

But even before that, there is the matter of the psaltery. True, I had an actor
and a monophonic instrument, but the clarinet (I eventually chose to use bass
clarinet) seemed far removed from the “murmuring wires” of Yeats’s childhood
vision. Some of the psalteries built by Dolmetsch survive, but they’re in muse-
ums. I wasn’t about to commission a new one, and I’m not an instrument-builder
myself. It seemed necessary to settle on an alternative, and my choice was the
autoharp—an American instrument that, perhaps coincidentally, came into
prominence at about the same time as Yeats’s and Farr’s lecture-performances.
The autoharp closely resembles the psaltery, and the playing techniques are
similar. Yeats’s description of Farr’s playing in 1901 implies that the psaltery was
held horizontally on the lap, with the performer seated: “a friend,” he wrote,
“sat with a beautiful stringed instrument upon her knee” (Yeats [1902] 1903,
16). In America, the popularity of the autoharp surged in the 1920s and 1930s
in the wake of seminal recordings by the Carter Family and others, and Sara
Carter generally held the instrument in her lap or placed it on a table. But in
a 1907 photograph of Florence Farr she holds the psaltery vertically, as one
would a lyre; that she performed in this manner is confirmed in contempo-
raneous reports of her late tours (Schuchard 2008, 227 and plate 11). Maybelle
Carter, Sara’s cousin, developed an exactly equivalent technique for the auto-
harp, and it is this that has been followed by present-day performers like John
B. Sebastian.
From a practical point of view the autoharp has certain advantages over a
psaltery. It’s easy to play; one plays chords or single notes simply by pressing
down combinations of buttons, then strumming the strings in the register
desired. A psaltery, in contrast, is quite difficult, as the strings are played singly
and are undifferentiated. Dolmetsch remarked on this in a late critique of Farr:
“Florence Farr had the poetic feeling,” he wrote. “All went well when I played
for her—but she could not follow her own voice with her instrument, espe-
cially when performing in public” (Schuchard 2008, 353–54). In addition, the
autoharp can easily be retuned, to obtain unconventional chords or, indeed,
quarter-tones; for Everlasting Voices I devised a tuning that permitted both
quarter-tone inflections and chords of stacked fourths (rather than the triads
for which the autoharp is designed). I have concluded that the autoharp is an
excellent—even superior!—substitute for the psaltery.
With the “psaltery” reinvented, it was tempting to turn to Yeats’s own record-
ings and to those by Clinton-Baddeley and other associates (Yeats [1932] 1955;
Clinton-Baddeley, Balcon, and Westbury [1958] 1973). I approached Yeats’s
recording of “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” as if I were Arnold Dolmetsch: that
is, I notated the tones of his reading on a conventional staff. (For the sake of
authenticity I first tried a “wavy-line” notation, but—like Yeats—I found this
too imprecise to be useful.) Then I extracted what seemed to be the central,
reference pitches; as I had guessed from studying Yeats’s method, this was
as much a compositional process as an analytical one. Lastly, I synthesised a
psaltery part from sound samples recorded from the autoharp, one string at a
time. When this was superimposed on Yeats’s recording, I had, hypothetically, a
recording of a performance that might have been heard in 1901.

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This was an interesting activity, and I believe the results are convincing; but it
did not feel like artistic research. The process was more akin to the restoration
of a missing part in a Renaissance motet: there were decisions to be made and
variants to be tested, but both the compositional technique and the standards
to be applied were known in advance. I was not building on Yeats’s research pro-
ject; I was merely recreating a lost fragment from it. Moreover, the future was
extremely limited: even if I looked beyond Yeats himself to Clinton-Baddeley
and others, there were only a handful of recorded performances with which to
work.
The next alternative was to turn to the notated poems. There are many
more of these (though the repertoire is still quite limited), and often the nota-
tion is precise enough to attempt to recreate a performance from it. I chose
“Impetuous Heart,” which has a particularly rich notational history. I had my
psaltery, and it only remained to learn the score and develop a performance
technique. I practised, recorded myself, practised some more, and eventually
achieved a level of mediocrity that seemed adequate for my purposes.
This too was interesting and—with more practice or a more talented per-
former—probably aesthetically convincing; but it too was research only in
a limited sense. I was, after all, merely executing a score; and though I cer-
tainly learned quite a bit—for example, about how hard it is not to “sing”—I
didn’t advance Yeats’s ideas significantly. As with any “historically informed”
performance, the combination of scholarship, intuition, and judgment pro-
duced unexpected variations and curious difficulties; but no new terrain was
traversed, though the ground was somewhat cleared.
There remained the third, most open option: to adopt the method but to
deliberately disregard the traces, the scores, the specific artefacts of Yeats’s
original project. Yeats’s method, as I have said, was grounded in practice, in the
experiential, empirical discovery of a reading, with all else following from that:
instrument, tuning, notation, reproduction. I had my artist, my Florence Farr,
in the person of Nuala Hayes; I simply asked her to listen to Yeats, read what
he had to say, and then to arrive at her own rendition of the poetry. She sent
me a recording, and from that I derived an autoharp tuning that suited her
voice, together with a notation. I was again acting as Dolmetsch, but this time
in response to a living person, who had her own embodied understanding of
the text; suddenly the project seemed alive.
In the meantime I had been working on a script for the piece as a whole, and
I felt strongly that I wanted to include Yeats as a presence: the history of chant-
ing seemed deeply entwined with the story of Maud Gonne, and that was in
part the story I wanted to tell. I determined that I would include excerpts from
Yeats’s Memoirs and Gonne’s letters; Nuala would read the latter, but for the for-
mer I needed a second, male voice. This I found in the talented and responsive
Irish actor and playwright Denis Dennehy. I sent him a collection of texts with
the request that he, too, listen to Yeats; then I went to Ireland and recorded his
beautiful readings. These became the threads winding through the channels of
fixed media, and these too I supplied with “psaltery” accompaniments, using
the samples I had recorded.

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 William Brooks

My objective now was to work in the spirit of Yeats, with due regard for his
method and thought, but not necessarily to “recreate” events that might have
occurred a century ago. Hence the project was open-ended: the topic itself,
the very “research question,” was being transformed by the answers that were
proposed. Again I am reminded of William James: distinctions and decisions
that arise as an organism interacts with its senses become themselves part of
the sensed universe. The feeling of what we do is as real as the feeling of what we
touch, and both are apprehended in the same stream of consciousness. So also,
the answers that we supply are as much questions as those we have asked, and
the whole is folded into the single, continuous process that we call “research.”
Everlasting Voices thus became a new research project, with a domain that over-
lapped Yeats’s but differed from it. I grew preoccupied with the full spectrum
of monody, from quotidian speech to abstract music. I assigned the extremes
to Maud Gonne, who seemed such a polarised being: Gonne’s letters receive a
wholly prosaic reading, while Yeats’s recollections of Gonne are accompanied
by arching, untexted melodies on the bass clarinet. In between there is live,
chanted poetry (Nuala Hayes as Florence Farr), traditional Irish melody (Paul
Roe playing “Yellow-Haired Donough,” a tune explicitly cited in Cathleen ni
Houlihan), heightened speech (Denis Dennehy reading from Yeats’s Memoirs),
and theatrical oratory (excerpts from the two “Countess” plays). The psaltery,
too, is expanded: from quarter-tones to microtonal and “bent” pitches, impos-
sible on an acoustic instrument but easily accomplished electronically; from
single tones to chords and counterpoints; from plucked strings to clarinet sam-
ples and electronically derived drones.
But all these details are, in a sense, unimportant; they constitute mere arte-
facts, the “outputs” of a research process in the twenty-first century, like Yeats’s
scores, articles, and recordings over a century ago. The score to Everlasting Voices
will, I hope, receive additional performances, and there will be new problems
to solve: performers will differ, balances will need recalculating, a different
“psaltery” will be used. But resolving such matters will not constitute artistic
research, any more than did my attempt to perform “Impetuous Heart.” Artistic
research, it seems, has more to do with generating questions than with pro-
viding answers; it is more a matter of observing and aspiring than testing and
achieving.

And with this I come to a few concluding remarks—about “conclusion.”

Research in and through performance is intrinsically ephemeral; either its sub-
ject or its manifestation is gone the instant it ends. Even the most elaborate set
of traces—the most exhaustive documentation—is never the same as the per-
formance itself. For this reason, to study such research always entails, to some
extent, the re-creation of an act—not as an academic exercise but as a part of
the research method itself.
This is not necessarily the case for other domains of study. I recall, as an
undergraduate physics student, several tortuous hours in a laboratory re-cre-

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 Historical Precedents for Artistic Research in Music

ating the Millikan oil-drop experiment. I understood the experiment from

the texts I had read, and my understanding did not change in the laboratory. I
merely practised skills that I might apply later, in a kind of scientific equivalent
to the scales and arpeggios that (that evening) I practised assiduously on the
piano. In contrast, to understand music one had to re-create; though I had read,
and listened, and studied, my knowledge of the “Waldstein” Sonata was trans-
formed the moment I began to play it. This was no idle exercise: the performed
music could only be apprehended in the moment of performance.
It follows that, in a sense, no research in performance ever concludes; every
“output” must be redone to be understood. Do I wish to grasp the thinking
behind Clifford Curzon’s fingerings? Then I must perform them. Do I want to
understand “chanting”? Then I must speak to the psaltery.
But it also follows that no performance is ever actually “re-created”; the
traces are only an incentive to bring something new into being. The Millikan
oil-drop experiment existed to justify the creation of a trace, a paper, in which
conclusions were communicated; but “Speaking to the Psaltery,” the research
trace, exists to justify the continuation of a practice without conclusion. And
so we have “historically informed” performance—performance defiantly in
the present, but acknowledging (as the present does) the past; and we could
plausibly have historically informed composition, or even historically informed
research. But there are no historically informed oil drops.
Elsewhere in this volume (see the chapters by Michael Schwab), in another
publication (Schwab 2013), and in dozens of conversations at the Orpheus
Institute, attempts have been made to apply Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s analysis
of scientific research to artistic research. I find his distinction between “tech-
nical object” and “epistemic thing” to be particularly helpful in considering
my response to William Butler Yeats. What am I to make of Yeats’s recording of
“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” or Dolmetsch’s notations for “Impetuous Heart”?
If I take these as technical objects—the fixed results of a study that has end-
ed—I can make only new technical objects in response. I can add a psaltery part
to the recording; I can perform the notation. These new artefacts may demon-
strate the viability of Yeats’s original process, but they also close the conver-
sation; they assert not only that Yeats’s job has been done, but that the job of
showing that it was done has also been done.
Or I can take those century-old items to be open-ended, epistemic things. In
this case I am constructing not new artefacts but new questions, not new his-
tories but new communities. I create “artistic research” in and through perfor-
mance—research that must be encountered in the present—research that adopts
a mode of inquiry precisely to assert that the job is not done. And I do what
I can to ensure that the artefacts that I create—the score called “Everlasting
Voices,” for instance—remain epistemic, that the questions they ask outlast the
answers they seem to supply.
It’s hard to imagine that it could be otherwise. For if it were, what would I
have to tell?

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 William Brooks

References
Clinton-Baddeley, V. C., Jill Balcon, and Yeats, William Butler. 1888. Fairy and Folk
Marjorie Westbury. (1958) 1973. Poems by Tales of the Irish Peasantry. London: W.
W. B. Yeats Spoken According to His Own Scott.
Directions. Originally issued on Jupiter ———. (1902) 1903. “Speaking to the
Records. Re-released on Folkways Psaltery.” In Ideas of Good and Evil, 16–28.
Records, FL 9894, LP. London: A. H. Bullen. First published
Farr, Florence. 1909. The Music of Speech. in The Monthly Review 7 (2) (May 1902),
London: Elkin Mathews. [94]–99.
Gonne, Maud. 1992. The Gonne-Yeats Letters: ———. (1907) 1916. The Poetical Works of
Always Your Friend, edited by Anna William B. Yeats. Volume II: Dramatic Poems.
MacBride White and A. Norman Jeffares. New and revised edition. New York:
London: Hutchinson. Macmillan.
Greer, Mary K. 1995. Women of the Golden ———. 1922. The Trembling of the Veil.
Dawn: Rebels and Priestesses. Rochester, VT: London: T. Werner Laurie.
Park Street Press. ———. 1924. Essays. New and revised
James, William. 1912. Essays in Radical edition. New York: Macmillan.
Empiricism, edited by Ralph Barton Perry. ———. (1932) 1955. The Caedmon Treasury of
New York: Longmans, Green. Modern Poets Reading Their Own Poetry, vol.
Johnson, Josephine. 1975. Florence Farr: 2. Caedmon Literary Series, TC 0995, LP.
Bernard Shaw’s “New Woman.” Gerrards ———. 1972. Memoirs, edited by Denis
Cross, UK: Colin Smythe. Donoghue. London: Macmillan.
Schuchard, Ronald. 2008. The Last Minstrels: ———. 1989. Letters to the New Island,
Yeats and the Revival of the Bardic Arts. edited by George Bornstein and Hugh
Oxford: Oxford University Press. Witemeyer. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Schwab, Michael, ed. 2013. Experimental ———. 1994. The Collected Letters of W.
Systems: Future Knowledge in Artistic B. Yeats: Volume 3, 1901–1904, edited
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Reminiscences. London: Smith, Elder.

194
 Cageian Interpenetration
and the Nature–Artifice
Distinction
Steve Tromans
Middlesex University

Nothing needs to be connected to anything else since they are not separated
irrevocably to begin with
—John Cage (1961b, 228–29)

We are not in the world, we become with the world

—Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1994, 169)

i ntr o duc ti o n
Cage defined interpenetration as “an incalculable infinity of causes and
effects” in which “each and every thing . . . is related to each and every other
thing” (Cage 1958, 47, quoted in Nyman 1999, 65). This paper is concerned with
exploring the research implications of Cageian interpenetration in terms of
certain of the philosophical notions found in the writings of Deleuze (alone,
and with Guattari).
In contrast to the distinction that language allows us to make between per-
former, instrument, composer, score, audience, and environment, actual lived
experience of performance events bears testament to no such clear-cut catego-
risations. Deleuze and Guattari (1994, 159) theorised events as being complexly
interrelated with the various elements that bring them about – and vice versa.
From this view, Cageian interpenetration would be more consistent with the
natural state-of-play of an event of performance than an artificial compositional
strategy—as much as a nature/artifice distinction can, or indeed should, be
maintained (as I will argue).
I propose that Cage’s interpenetrative compositional assemblages can oper-
ate in practice-as-research terms, where the subject of that research investiga-
tion is temporal becoming—that is, the process in which things exist/persist
in time. I argue that Cageian interpenetration draws our attention to a much
larger and ongoing interpenetrative process, one that has implications for
how we understand our everyday experiences of the world around us and our
place(s) within it.

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 Steve Tromans

M o delli ng o u r experien c es in th e Wo rld

Our common-sense notions of the separateness and separability of people and

things in the world—and also the distinction between “the world” and its “con-
tents”—is a reflection of the ways in which we model our life experiences. By
this I mean that, in research terms, the methods utilised, and the modes of doc-
umentation relied upon, effect a transformation of their objects of study that is
of a fundamental, rather than incidental, nature. In this, the second decade of
the twenty-first century, we are, as music researchers, in a position potentially to
benefit from work done in other disciplinary fields on the meta-research issues
surrounding methods of analysis and modes of documentation. For instance,
as the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu pointed out in the early 1970s, any analysis
of practices that are temporally grounded (such as music-making, in the case of
the concerns of our particular disciplinary field) will effect a de-temporalisation
on those practices—effectively spatialising that which it seeks to understand.
“For the analyst,” Bourdieu (1977, 9) wrote, “time no longer counts . . . he [or
she] has the time to . . . overcome the effects of time.” For Bourdieu, the “synop-
tic apprehension” analysis makes possible a forgetting of “the transformation
it imposes on practices inscribed in the current of time” (ibid.).
In music research terms, this difference in temporality can be demonstrated
by the distinction between live music-making in an event of performance and
a recording of the same performance that can be studied at leisure, and repeat-
edly, after the event. The former—the music event itself—is grounded in the
time in which it is made, whereas the latter—the recording—is a linear docu-
ment of certain aspects of that event. A recording is linear, in that it presents
a “timeline” of the music event through which we are able to move forwards
and backwards in the course of our analyses. In an event of music-making in
performance, we have no such luxury—the time experienced in the event is of
a different nature to that of the document and its analysis.
In the late-nineteenth-century terms of the philosopher Henri Bergson
([1913] 2001, 90), we can say that the linear temporality of the analytical doc-
ument is spatial—it situates things in space and enables us to isolate distinct
entities according to our particular requirements. The other kind of time—the
temporal quality of the event, as it is in a condition of unfolding—was what
Bergson called duration [la durée]; he argued that this was the temporality with
which we are all familiar in our experiences of being alive in the world. This sec-
ond kind of temporality—Bergson’s duration—is internal to each living thing,
and is differently experienced by each one (ibid. 110–11).
In terms of Bergson’s duration, the sense of linear succession that we import
into the flow of time by consequence of our use of spatialising documentation
is replaced by a process that the philosopher himself, using interpenetrative
terms, described as “the elements of concrete duration permeat[ing] one
another” ([1913] 2001, 218) and “an inner life in which succession implies inter-
penetration” (ibid., 228). All of which brings me (in time) to a Cageian notion of
interpenetration, as found both in his writings and (most importantly for the
concerns of this paper) in certain configurations of his major compositional
works—for instance, the simultaneous performance of the Concert for Piano and

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 Cageian Interpenetration and the Nature–Artifice

Orchestra (1957–58), the Song Books (1970), and the Rozart Mix (1965) that was
famously given by Cage and others in Paris in 1970. Below, I turn my attention
to the temporality particular to Cageian interpenetration, as well as to a consid-
eration of its usefulness to research on the complex temporality of existence—
that is, research undertaken in music-making itself, rather than in written or
recorded documentation or other spatialising modes of research-practice.

c agei an i nter penetr ati o n an d tiMe experien c e in th e even t

o F per Fo r Ma nc e

In the text of his 1961 lecture-performance “Where Are We Going? And What
Are We Doing?” and the introduction that precedes it in Silence, John Cage
(1961b) frequently expresses opinions of a distinctly Bergsonian nature, some
of which would be useful to examine at this point. I should point out that Cage
himself was certainly aware of Bergson’s writings, directly referencing the
latter’s philosophy in his 1957 essay “Experimental Music” (12). The compo-
sitional format of “Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing?” is of an
interpenetrated nature, with four different lectures being delivered simultane-
ously. Interestingly, in his introduction to the piece, Cage expressed a dissatis-
faction with having to present the four different texts in a legible manner in the
pages of Silence. He called such a linear presentation of what in performance is
experienced as an extraordinary intermingling of disparate words and phrases,
“a dubious advantage” (ibid., 194).
At times, the experience of a performance of the piece can be frustrating,
given our tendency to try to follow the linear progress of a single verbal dis-
course that is being thwarted by Cage’s deliberate superimposition of three
others. However, Cage was clear in his desire to present a sense of the complex-
ity of nature, “in her manner of operation”, rather than what he called “man’s
control” of, or attempts to control, nature (ibid.). We are not in the driver’s
seat with respect to nature, Cage argued (ibid., 195), and our experiences in
the world are, to use Cage’s words, “gotten all at once” (ibid., 194). In experi-
encing a performance of “Where Are We Going? And What Are We Doing?”
(rather than reading its four different texts individually on the printed page),
we are presented with a complexly interwoven, temporally-grounded event of
music-making. We are confronted by a sense of an enduring permeation and
interpenetration, as opposed to a linear succession in spatial time that would
admit easy representation in one or other modes of analytical documentation.
So if, in Bergson’s (and Cage’s) view, such complex interpenetrations are
closer to the temporality experienced in the various events in our lives—or in
an event of performance—what, in our research into the experiential dimen-
sion of being in the world, or in an event of music-making, are the implications
for our modellings of this? The final section, below, addresses this very ques-
tion in terms of the practice-as-research methods (and modes of presentation)
I consider inherent in Cage’s compositional interpenetrations.

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 Steve Tromans

b ec o M i ng With th e W o rld an d th e n atu re – arti Fic e

c o nti nuu M

The late-twentieth-century philosopher Gilles Deleuze was greatly influenced

by Bergson’s writings, and many of Deleuze’s major concepts are of a distinctly
Bergsonian nature—in his writings alone, and in his collaborations with Félix
Guattari. In line with Bergson (and Cage) on the indivisibility of the various
elements in the event of real duration—of real experience—Deleuze and
Guattari argued in the early 1990s that “We are not in the world, we become
with the world” (1994, 169). The two authors wrote of an event that it is “insep-
arable from the state of affairs, bodies, and lived reality in which it is actualized
or brought about” (ibid., 159). Crucially, and relevant to the concerns of this
paper, they add: “But we can also say the converse” (ibid.).
Clearly, there are strong similarities between Deleuze and Guattari’s
Bergsonian notion of “becoming with” the world (rather than simply “being in”
it) and Cage’s mid-twentieth-century ideas on the interpenetration of all things
in our experiences of nature. In fact, in one of the four texts of “Where Are We
Going? And What Are We Doing?” Cage wrote that “Nothing needs to be con-
nected to anything else since they are not separated irrevocably to begin with”
(1961b, 228–29). I would argue that, if we are to follow Deleuze and Guattari’s
notion of becoming to its conclusion—logical or otherwise—we find ourselves
immersed in a world that is not only in a constant state of change but is also in
and of us in a fundamental way. In other words, the distinction between “us”
and “the world” is a contrived one—certainly convenient as a matter of clarity,
but not at all in line with actual experience of being alive. “If the living being
resembles the world, this is true . . . insofar as it opens itself to the opening of
the world,” wrote Deleuze and Guattari ([1977] 2004, 105) in the early 1970s,
continuing: “if it is a whole, this is true to the extent that the whole, of the world
as of the living being, is always in the process of becoming, developing, coming
into being or advancing, and inscribing itself within a temporal dimension that
is irreducible and nonclosed.” In this view, Cageian interpenetration would be
more in line with the natural state-of-play of an event of performance than an
artificial compositional strategy—as much as a nature/artifice distinction can,
or indeed should, be maintained.
Which brings me to my final point: if interpenetration is the modus operandi
of nature in everyday affairs, then a Cageian interpenetration is deeply reflective
of that natural state-of-play. In fact, I would go further and suggest that Cage’s
interpenetrative compositions and performances function on the level of artis-
tic research—in other words, they were, and are, practice-as-research experi-
ments undertaken in the medium of music-making. For this reason—and given
the drawbacks associated with documentation and its linearising, spatialising
tendencies—I would suggest that a performance of a Cageian interpenetration
can enable a theoretical engagement with the research problem of temporal
experience that simply cannot be undertaken in the typical media of more tra-
ditional research practice. Through the concept of interpenetration, and, more
importantly, its temporally-grounded practice in an event of performance, the
natural and the artificial meet—and we are, in experiencing an interpenetrated

198
 Cageian Interpenetration and the Nature–Artifice

performance, in a position to feel with our different senses that which we typi-
cally choose to ignore in our research models and modes of presentation. What
we are often ignorant of is, to quote Cage (1957, 12) paraphrasing Bergson, the
“disharmony” which “is simply a harmony to which many are unaccustomed.”
And yet, we are accustomed to such an apparent disharmony, even though it is
most commonly felt rather than articulated discursively—it is the natural state
of variated, experiential living, including right here, right now. As Cage (1961b,
195) appealed at the close of his introduction to “Where Are We Going? And
What Are We Doing?”: “Here we are. Let us say Yes to our presence together in
Chaos.”

References
Bergson, Henri. (1913) 2001. Time and Free Press.
Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of ———. 1961b. “Where Are We Going? And
Consciousness. Translated by F. L. Pogson. What Are We Doing?” In Cage 1961a,
3rd ed. Mineola, NY: Dover. First 194–259.
published 1889 as Essai sur les données Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. (1977)
immédiates de la conscience (Paris: Alcan). 2004. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and
This translation first published 1910 Schizophrenia. Translated by Robert
(London: George Allen); 3rd ed. first Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane.
published 1913 (London: George Allen). London: Continuum. First published
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory 1972 as Anti-Œdipe (Paris: Éditions de
of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Minuit). This translation first published
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1977 (New York: Viking Press).
First published 1972 as Esquisse d’une Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1994.
théorie de la pratique: précédé de trois études What is Philosophy? Translated by Hugh
d’ethnologie kabyle (Geneva: Librairie Tomlinson and Graham Burchell.
Droz). London: Verso Books. First published
Cage, John. 1957. “Experimental Music.” In 1991 as Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? (Paris:
Cage 1961a, 7–12. Éditions de Minuit).
———. 1958. “Composition as Process: III. Nyman, Michael. 1999. Experimental Music:
Communication.” In Cage 1961a, 41–56. Cage and Beyond. 2nd ed. Cambridge:
———. 1961a. Silence: Lectures and Writings. Cambridge University Press.
Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University

199
 Revisiting Luigi Nono’s
Suffered, Serene Waves1
Paulo de Assis
Orpheus Institute, Ghent

One often hears that to understand a work of art one needs to know its historical
context. Against this historicist commonplace, a Deleuzian counter-claim would
be not only that too much of a historical context can blur the proper contact with
a work of art (i.e., that to enact this contact one should abstract from the work’s
context), but also that it is, rather, the work of art itself that provides a context
enabling us to understand properly a given historical situation.
—Slavoj �i�ek ([2004] 2012, 13)

an a es theti c o F th e s ubtlest d iFF eren c es

Luigi Nono’s . . . sofferte onde serene . . . for piano and tape (1975/77) was com-
posed during a period of intense reflection and self-criticism that led Nono to
new modes of composing and to renewed perspectives on the arts, on aesthet-
ics, and, crucially, on the political implications of art. Contrary to Nono’s pieces
of the previous decade, . . . sofferte onde serene . . . has no direct political message.
Its main focuses are the study of Maurizio Pollini’s piano sonority and playing
techniques and the study of diverse compositional techniques and strategies.
To a certain extent it is a renewed exploration of some constructive principles
that Nono had learned in the late 1940s from his teachers Hermann Scherchen
and Bruno Maderna (see also, Assis 2006, 150–55). In this sense, . . . sofferte onde
serene . . . may be seen as the beginning of a new path, as a piece that opens the
door to a new “style”—a style that produced works such as Prometeo. Tragedia
dell’ascolto (1981/84), Caminantes . . . Ayacucho (1986/87), or La lontananza nostal-
gica utopica futura, madrigale per più caminantes con Gidon Kremer (1988/89).
The simple aural comparison of . . . sofferte onde serene . . . with several of
Nono’s works that immediately preceded it, such as Como una ola de fuerza y luz
(1971/72), Al gran sole carico d’amore (1972–74), or Für Paul Dessau (1975), makes
the shift from his “second style” (1960–75) to his “late style” the more obvious.
Nono himself stated that:

1 A reduced version of this text was published as Assis (2013). All translations from the Italian, unless
otherwise stated, are by the author.

201
 Paulo de Assis

Immediately after Al gran sole carico d’amore there was silence, an unutterable silence.
. . . I felt an urgent need to study—not only regarding my musical language but also
my mental categories, and I restarted composing again with . . . sofferte onde serene. . .,
a piece that requested a lot of work. (Nono [1979–80] 2001, 2:245).

However, the result of this aesthetic and ideological shifting was not that Nono
became apolitical or somehow indifferent to political issues of the day. On the
contrary, in 1975 he became a member of the Central Committee of the Italian
Communist Party. What Nono realised more and more was that his previous
works, with all their explicit political engagement, had been easily misunder-
stood as bare “pamphlet art,” their political contents shadowing their intrinsic
musical features, so that the latter were not properly perceived by the listener.
Starting with . . . sofferte onde serene . . ., Nono’s late works bring the inner musi-
cal structures and features to the foreground, focusing on small instrumental
forces, on subtle harmonic fields and clearly differentiable vertical sound-ag-
gregates, on extreme soft dynamics and fine articulation markings, on frag-
mented successions of sections, and on a highly elaborated dialogue with old
historical forms. The act of listening to these works becomes a highly demand-
ing process—the listener being confronted with his or her own capacity (or
incapacity) for listening.
The making and the reception of music gains herewith a new dimension:
that of enabling a redistribution of the sensible, suggesting other possibilities for
things to be arranged, configured, assembled, and exposed. Following Jacques
Rancière’s The Politics of Aesthetics (and quoting Gabriel Rockhill’s “Glossary of
Technical Terms” in that book), the term sensible as I am using it here “does
not refer to what shows good sense or judgement but to what is aisthëton or
capable of being apprehended by the senses” (Rockhill 2004, 85). This broader
conception of “the political” opens up wider avenues for artistic practices and
activities, pointing to subtle nuances and differences that might function as
explosive detonators, first for individual subjectivities, later for assemblages or
groups of individuals. There is then a politics of aesthetics that goes beyond
Benjamin’s issue of the aestheticisation of politics, or Brecht’s outspoken
experimental forms. In Rancière’s words there is “a system of self-evident facts
of sense perception that simultaneously discloses the existence of something
in common and the delimitations that define the respective parts and posi-
tions within it” (Rancière 2004, 12). Challenging such systems to destabilise
them and propose new aesthetic assemblages has therefore an intrinsic polit-
ical dimension. Luigi Nono’s music after 1975 is an example of such politics of
the artwork: an aesthetic and a politics of the smallest differences, of the finest
details, of the barely audible; an invitation to question one’s identity and a call
for courageous change. In the effort to listen, one feels the urgency of finding
new balances, new arrangements, new distributions of the sensible. Through
listening one discovers new worlds—one might even rediscover oneself. The
crucial question is therefore: What is listening?

202
 Revisiting Luigi Nono’s Suffered, Serene Waves

Silence.

Listening is very difficult.

Very difficult to listen to others in the silence.

Other thoughts, other noises, other sounds, other ideas. When one comes to listen,
one often tries to rediscover oneself in others. To rediscover one’s own mechanisms,
system, rationalism in the others.

And this is a violence of the utmost conservative nature.

Instead of hearing the silence, instead of hearing the others, one often hopes to hear
oneself once again. That is an academic, conservative, and reactionary repetition. It
is a wall against ideas, against what is not yet possible to explain today.

. . . To listen to music.

That is very difficult.

I think it is a rare phenomenon today.

...

Perhaps one can change the rituals; perhaps it is possible to try to wake up the
ear. To wake up the ear, the eyes, human thinking, intelligence, the most exposed
inwardness.

This is now what is crucial.

(Nono [1983] 2001, 1:522)

g enes i s a nd M a i n c ha r ac teristic s o F ... so FFerte o n d e

s er ene . . .

In September 1971, Luigi Nono started working with Maurizio Pollini (1942–) at
the Studio di Fonologia della RAI, Milan, for the composition of Como una ola de
fuerza y luz (1971/72) for piano, soprano, orchestra, and tape. Recently returned
from an extensive South American tour, Nono was excited about the idea of cre-
atively collaborating with both Pollini and Claudio Abbado (1933–2013), with
whom Como una ola de fuerza y luz would be premiered almost two years later, on
June 28 1972: “Claudio Abbado and Maurizio Pollini: their new musical activity
is the development of an artistic partnership into the acquisition and adoption
of musical responsibilities that result from the human necessities of our time”
(Nono, in Stenzl 1975, p. 143). As this quotation makes evident, Nono was fas-
cinated not only by Pollini’s and Abbado’s impressive musical and technical
qualities, but also by their strong commitment to society, by their engagement
in socio-political causes, and by their strong, outspoken political positions.

203
 Paulo de Assis

Before and beyond the mere making of music was a human component that
proved to be quintessential to Nono’s creative collaboration with them.
Four years later, starting in December 1975 and continuing in several diverse
shorter recording sessions during the year 1976, Nono and Pollini collaborated
on another piece, . . . sofferte onde serene . . ., a fundamental work if one is to
understand Nono’s late style and his polemically debated aesthetic and ideo-
logical turnabout. The working sessions with Pollini at the Studio di Fonologia
della RAI, which involved both pieces (Como una ola de fuerza y luz and . . . sofferte
onde serene . . .), are extensively documented through working tapes and sketches
preserved at the Foundation Archivio Luigi Nono, Venice. The study of these
materials opens up illuminating avenues for the understanding of creative
collaborative practices in the third part of the twentieth century—a period in
which the electronic medium (first through magnetic tape, later through live
electronics) became increasingly important for composers. A detailed descrip-
tion and analysis of the concrete modalities of the collaboration between Nono
and Pollini is beyond the scope of this paper, though it was treated extensively
as part of my research work nearly a decade ago (see Assis 2006). Here, how-
ever, I wish solely to focus on . . . sofferte onde serene . . . and point out that in
this work several new elements emerge in Nono’s musical language, namely
a new understanding of the use of vertical sound-aggregates (“chords”), the
exploration of complex variational and canonical procedures, and, crucially,
new modes of organising “multi-temporalities,” with the piano and the tape
following different paths across the same landscape.
This piece—written by Nono in a moment of personal and artistic crisis—
marks the beginning of his late creative period. It was conceived experimen-
tally (especially the tape production), and its concert rendering involves vari-
ous degrees of uncertainty and unpredictability of sonic combinations. Nono
achieves this, in the first instance, through the use of “shadow” sounds—simi-
lar sonorities that come sometimes from the piano, sometimes from the tape,
and that generate a perceptual (con)fusion for the listener. This (con)fusion is
enhanced by relatively free time relations between piano (live) and tape, allow-
ing the performer on the piano and the performer controlling the sound-pro-
jection to intertwine a great variety of sonic relationships. From an analytical
perspective2 the piece might be seen as a succession of five units, each featuring
its own specific sound material and employing different compositional tools
and strategies. Taking into account the durations in the tape and the bars in the
score, the five sections of . . . sofferte onde serene . . . appear as follows:

2 For which see Assis (2006, especially 208–37); see also Linden (1989) for a different reading.

204
 Revisiting Luigi Nono’s Suffered, Serene Waves

Tape Bars in the score

1. 0:00–2:32 [2:32–2:45] 1–25

2. 2:45–4:50 [4:50–5:00] 25–49

3. 5:00–9:17 50–101

4. 9:18–11:49 102–37

5. 11:50–13:40 138–55+

Table 1.

To provide an example, let us briefly consider the first section. It is made of five
different presentations (“variations”) of the basic sonic material—a transpar-
ent constellation of twelve pitches (see Figure 1).

Fig. 1

Following the sketches used in the recording sessions (ALN 42.01 and ALN
42.02), Nono asked Pollini to play these pitches in diverse combinations and
successions. The results were recorded almost as a basic sample of sounds,
which would be mixed and assembled later by Nono at the mixing desk. This
means that during the studio recordings there was no “score” in front of Pollini.
On the contrary: it was the concrete recorded sounds that slowly, in a construc-
tive way, defined more and more precisely the sequence of sonic events—that
is, the score for the pianist playing the piece’s piano part. And if it is very clear
that the score and its writing are the complete responsibility of Nono (who
remains “the composer” in an orthodox sense), it is also true that the concrete
sonic input produced by Pollini was of the utmost importance for the defini-
tion of the music.
Beyond the creative collaborative practice between Nono and Pollini, another
aspect of collaboration must be mentioned—namely, the collaborative perfor-
mance practice between them. . . . sofferte onde serene . . . was not only premiered by
Pollini, for some years it was performed only by him—normally with Nono tak-

205

Table 1. . . . sofferte onde serene . . .: form synopsis.

Figure 1. Sketch ALN 42.04/02, detail.
 Paulo de Assis

ing care of the tape’s sonic projection. There has been much discussion (among
performers and sound technicians who play this piece) about how loudly to set
the acoustic level of the tape. In recent years the tendency has been to over-
emphasise the tape, to make the part equally as important as the live piano.
This tendency seems to contradict early recordings of the piece, including the
world premiere, a recording of which is preserved in Salzburg in Jürg Stenzl’s
Luigi Nono Archiv, where the tape plays the role of a soft background, a shadow
of a shadow. Independent of this important question, a major feature of the
piece is the correspondence between tape and live piano and the problem of
synchronisation.
Luigi Nono, liberating the music from strict prefixed temporal grids (as he
still did in Como una ola de fuerza y luz), creates for this piece an extremely flexi-
ble system based in eight “reference numbers for the tape” (see Nono 1977). If
we consider that between these reference points there are time slots of up to
two minutes it becomes clear that there is room for flexibility in terms of ver-
tical coordination. This aspect is extremely relevant, since it creates the basic
structure for a concrete multi-temporality where the “live” part (the piano)
gains a new dimension—that of being able to generate real differential repeti-
tion from one performance to the next. Piano and tape, both built around the
same sonic materials (pitches, rhythms, and timbre), enter a dialogue full of
echoes and resonances and also of announcements and foreshadowings. That
these relations should not be fixed permanently is a consequence of Nono’s
new orientation, both aesthetically and politically.
Almost four decades after the premiere of . . . sofferte onde serene . . . this work
is well established in the broad concert repertoire. However, the performances
of many pianists do not reflect the profound component of multi-temporality
that pervades this music. Moreover, the question of reconsidering the piece, of
critically rethinking the unpredictability of sonic combinations for every new
performance, remains widely unaddressed. The majority of the performers
simply aim to reproduce Maurizio Pollini’s timings following his recording for
Deutsche Grammophon. Most critically, however, the issue around the original
stereo tape remains unsolved, as the tape distributed with the commercialised
score is monophonic. In this respect, my ongoing research project produced
a replica of the original stereo tape. This replica of the tape—technically real-
ised by João Rafael (Freiburg im Breisgau) under my direct supervision—can
be heard, for academic purposes, at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent. It is the
tape used for the recording of the piece that I made, which accompanies this
chapter.3

3 CD, track 10: Luigi Nono, . . . sofferte onde serene . . . performed by Paulo de Assis.

206
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mf
U
j j j ‰ ‰ ∑
3 3 3
Œ ‰ ‰ #œ ≈ œœ Œ ≈ ‰ nbœœ..
∑
5

n œ bœ bœ nbœœ ‰ bœ œ b œ. œœ w
C. Bsn.
1. 2.
J J J u
3 3 pp mp
3 mp
pp pp p mf
.r ≈ 3
p pp

? U pp
‰ #œfij œ j 3
pp mp pp
U
¢ #œ Œ
3
C. Bsn. Œ ‰ ‰ œ #œ bœ œœ b#œ.
œ. bœ œ bœ . Œ ∑ ∑
3. 4. Ó ‰ J J ≈ Œ
mp pp
p
- mp mf- 5-

°? n œ.# œ # œ œj b œj œ b œ. b œ œ. #n œœ
3
#n œœ œœ
3

U J Œ ‰ U
Œ ‰ ‰ J Œ nœ œ ‰ J ‰ ∑ ‰bœ ‰ ‰ b œj Ó
3 3

® nœ nÆœ œ nœ. &

R nœ nœ
Hn.
1. 3. J
3 3 p p
p mf p pp mp 5
p p

‰ 3- -
mf pp

? ‰ U‰ ® j 3- U
Œ nœ œ. j ‰
‰ ‰ nœR nœœ ≈ nœ nœœ œŒ nœ nœ œ nœœ.. Œ ∑ ‰ ‰ Ó
3 3
œ &
#nœœ #nœœ
Hn.
u ‰ b œ œ ‰ ‰ # œ.
2. 4.
> J J > > mf mf
fi
5
mp p mf pp mp pp
œ #œ^ œ #œ. U
mp 3
U
3
b œ nœ

¢&
Trp.
1. 2.
‰ R ≈ Ó ∑ Œ ∑ ∑
mf p

° n>œ. n>œ œ n œ^. œn œ- n>œ b œ

Xylophone
5 5 3
U U
Perc. 1. & Œ ‰ ‰ Ó ∑ Œ ∑ ‰. nœ #œ œ Œ
Tubular f f p f p
U U
‰ #œ- ‰ #œ-J
Bells mf
& Œ ‰ ‰ Ó ∑ Œ ∑ Ó
Perc. 2.
J
mp mp
U
Perc. 3. ¢/ Œ ‰ ‰ Ó ∑
ΠU
∑ ∑
f p f
5 3

œn œ n œ b œ
5
o n œ n œ œ n œ.
b œo œ b >œ. U
3
œ
3

J R ≈ Ó U #œ #œ œ #œ œ #œ Œ
& ∑ Œ ∑ ‰. R #œJ œ #œ ‰
mf Ab p A§ G#
5
f mf
5
p 3 -
fij
#>œ. U
Hrp. p pp E§

? nbœœ
‰ ‰ U
∑
3
Œ &‰ R ≈ ? #œ ≈ j Œ Œ ‰ r ‰. ‰ ∑
3 3 5 3

# œ. #œ.#œ. ##>œœ œœ j j
“‘ bœ bœ
## œœ.. œœ w
u
p
pp mf
pp pp p mf mp

45 44
ATTACCA 3" ca. DOPPO Rif. 1
q = 72 ca.
q = 54 ca. rall. q = 44 ca. Tenuto rall. q = 54 ca.
œ b >œ.
pizz.

œ bœ
3 3 al RIFERIMENTO 1

° J R U≈ Ó ∑ Œ
U
∑ ∑
Vln. 1.
Solo &
mf p f p f
>. > 5
^ - 3> 5

œ œ œ nœ nœ œ nœ œn œ n œ b œ
.‰ #œ #œ œ . #œ œ
3 3
n >œ
SUL PONTE

ÆJ
J U U gli altri, div.
#œ
Vlns.
gli altri & ≈ ≈ Ó ∑ Œ ∑ R J Œ
5 5 3
mf f mf p p
SUL PONTE

œ bœ œ œ
3

J U U
Vla. 1.
Sola & ‰ Ó ∑ Œ ∑ ∑ B
f

nœ nœ œ œ U U #œ œ œ
3 SUL PONTE
n>œ
j
5 3
Vlas.
le altre & ÆJ J ‰ Ó ∑ Œ ∑ ‰. J #œ Œ B
mp mf f mf p

Oœ #nOœ^ Oœ U U
3

Vc. 1. ? ‰ ‰ Ó ∑ Œ ∑ ∑
Solo
f
#>œ. U U
pizz.

Vcs. ? Œ ‰ & R ≈ Ó ∑ Œ ∑ ∑ ?
gli altri
p pizz. arco
U r 3 j 3 U
? ‰#œfi œ
¢
Tutti 3
j
D.B. Œ ‰ ‰ #œ. ≈ Œ œ #œ œ #œ. bœ œ bœ . Œ ∑ ∑
pp p pp pp mp pp

Fig. 2

Figure 2. Nono, …sofferte onde serene…, version by Paulo de Assis for orchestra and 3
groups, Score A, bars 8–11.
 PARTITURA B
Luigi Nono
orch. by Paulo de Assis

Start ORCHESTRA

0"

q = 60
44
1"
54
5" 10" 15"

nœ œ œ nœ œ n -œ. œ n ˙.
con aria, 5 5

≈n- -
1 suono velato
Bass Clarinet in Bb ? Œ Ó
5
r ‰. ‰ ‰ R r
L bw œ œ bœ ppp pp ppp
ppp mp pp p

° Œ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑
Horn in F
L &

? Œ
¢
∑ Œ ∑
3
j
b œ ˙.
Trombone
L bw œ bœ
ppp pp pp
pp
@ ≈ 5 Œ
‰ Œ
Cymbals
j
p

œ ‰ œ. Ó ∑ ∑
Óœ Ó
High 5
/ ‰ œ J
Œ
Medium

J
Low
Percussion 1. mf

≈^œj. j j K
‰ Œ ‰ œj. Ó ‰.. œr Ó Œ ‰ œj Œ
• ppp
L Bass Drum
≈œ
5 5

/ œfi
j
œ ‰ Œ Œ œ Ó Ó
ppp p pp ppp f ppp ppp
n œ n>œ œ. ˙. n œ n>œ w nœ œ n œ n œ. nœ
5 5
LEFT
≈. RÔ J ‰. J r 5
& Œ nœ Œ ® ≈ nœ œ. ®
GROUP œ ˙.
Harp MNMOLLMM mp mf mf f ppp pp ppp mp mp mp

b-œb>œ œ b˙ .
5
? Œ bœ
L Prepare: C#1 // D1
∑ Œ
5 3
j R
b˙ œ bœ ˙ bœ ≈b œ ˙.
mp
#n œœ.. ˙˙ mf ppp p f 5
ppp
ppp

°B
Arco mobile: Ponte
col legno battuto arco Tasto

‰ n¿R ≈ ≈ ¿R ‰. Œ
arco ord.
r‰.
5 CRINI + LEGNO
Œ Œ Œ Œ ‰ ≈
3 5 Tasto

nw œ œ nœfi
œ œ nœ ˙. nœ
Viola
L j
SUL TASTO ppp ppp pp ppp ppp

n œ-. n ˙.
FLAUTATO

w
Œ ‰ b¿J . Y
LEGERISSIMO
arco CRINI + LEGNO

? ≈ J bœ. ‰.
¢
pizz. ord.
5
¿ 3 bœ ˙. bœ Œ ‰. bœR
Double Bass
L R J
ppp f ff lasciare vibrare! mp p
Mit den Fingerknöcheln auf
der Decke geschlagen;
linke Hand auf den Es

FRONT GROUP
TACET until bar 32

q = 60
44 54
? Œ bœ bœ- bw
al limite dell'udibilitá
œ œ bœ ˙ bw œ œ bœ ˙. œ
3
bœ
ÆJ J
Contrabassoon
R
ppppp ppppp pp mp p ppp ppp

°?
Horn in F
R
Œ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑

? Œ
¢
∑
3
j
œ b œ ˙.
Trombone
R bw œ b œ b œ- b w œ
n œ.
Wood Block ppp p pp ppp ppp

& ≈ J ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑
Percussion 2. mp

n-œ. K
≈. nœr nœj œ Ó.
R Glockenspiel Timpani

& ≈ J ∑ ? ≈nœ œ Œ Ó
5
nœ nœ œ. ˙. &
pp
>
mp mf
> mp
n œ-.
mf f
RIGHT
n œ n>œ œ. ˙. n œ n>œ w nœ œ n œ n œ. ..
Œ nœ œ nœ
5 5

& ≈ J
5
GROUP ≈. ÔR J ‰. J ® ≈ rŒ Œ
5
Celesta
r
nœ œ nœ œ n ˙. ppp
R
ppp mp mf mf f ppp ppp ppp mp
p
mp ppp
n w≥o œ.n œ≤o n œ≥o w
Poch.mo arco, velocissimo
n œo ˙ n ȯ
SUL TASTO
˙
5

° nnOœI ..
LEGERISSIMO
FLAUTATO

.‰ J
SUL TASTO

& ≈ J Ó Œ
LEGERISSIMO
Violin
R
ppp ppppp mp ppp ppp ppppp ppppp
Mit den Fingerknöcheln auf
der Decke geschlagen;

Œ ‰ b¿J . Y
linke Hand auf den Es
fij
? Œ bœ. ‰.
¢
SUL TASTO pizz. ord. arco
bœ w 5
¿ bœ ˙.
3
bœ bw œ
R J
Double Bass
R
ppp f ff lasciare vibrare! mp p ppp

© 2008 Paulo de Assis

Fig. 3

Figure 3. Nono, …sofferte onde serene…, version by Paulo de Assis for orchestra and
three groups, Score B, bars 1–4.
 Revisiting Luigi Nono’s Suffered, Serene Waves

o r c h es tr a l ex pa ns i o n

After dozens of performances of . . . sofferte onde serene . . . as a pianist (between

1995 and 2012), after a doctoral thesis on it (1999–2003), and after the realisa-
tion of a critical edition of its score (2009, supported by the Orpheus Institute,
Ghent), I decided to revisit this work from a completely new angle, making an
orchestration both of the piano part and of the tape. To further explore and
develop specific practices of multi-temporality, two completely different scores
were written down: one for the orchestra (onstage) playing what had been the
piano part, the other for three groups (positioned around the audience) per-
forming on acoustic instruments what had originally been the magnetic tape
(see figs. 2–3). The two conductors—reading two completely different and
partially independent scores—have to develop the sense of a chamber-music–
oriented performance while conducting more than sixty musicians. The focus
is thus placed on the collaborative creative performance. Every rehearsal and every
concert rendering will be concretely different, while retaining the basic musi-
cal structure. Beyond the flexible coordination of temporalities established by
the two conductors, the individual orchestral musicians have certain degrees of
freedom, especially in the many notated suspensions—spots where their crea-
tivity is “locally” demanded. In such moments, the conductor stops conducting
for a moment and gives space to the individuals.
Another crucial element of the original composition concerns the spatialisation
of the tape projection. According to the evidence from the sketches and from
the LP produced by Deutsche Grammophon (with Maurizio Pollini), Nono
composed a stereophonic tape with some sections in mono. Sections 1, 4, and
5 were (partially) in stereo, whereas the central sections, 2 and 3, were in mono.
This means that the return of the sound materials from section 1 in section 4
(which functions as a “reprise”) coincided also with a reopening of the acoustic
horizon—from monophony to stereophony. This aspect is currently lost, given
that the existing tape is completely monophonic. In my orchestration, I bring
it back to life: sections 1 and 4 are played by the two external groups (Left and
Right), while the centrally positioned group plays sections 2 and 3. For the last
section all groups play together. Table 2 summarises this aspect:

Bars in the score Original tape Orchestral groups

1. 1–25 Stereo Left & Right
2. 26–49 Mono Front
3. 50–101 Mono Front
4. 102–37 Stereo Left & Right
5. 138–55 Stereo All

Table 2

209

Table 2. Luigi Nono/Paulo de Assis . . . sofferte onde serene . . . for four orchestral groups.
 Paulo de Assis

This orchestration of . . . sofferte onde serene . . . was commissioned by the WDR

Cologne and premiered on 9 November 2012 at the Kölner Philharmonie
with the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, conducted by Peter Rundel and Léo
Warynski. During the rehearsals several possibilities for vertical coordination
between the two musical entities (the orchestra onstage and the groups in the
space) were tried, explored, and worked out. For all the musicians involved in
the project this seemed to be an innovative exploration of different temporal-
ities running parallel to one another but coinciding in basic structural points.
By reworking a composition that resulted from a collaborative creative practice
and that enacted multi-temporalities through the articulation “piano–tape,”
this orchestration suggests new modes of presenting and performing mul-
ti-temporal music pieces: works with multiple, independent, smoothly-varying
tempi. In addition to the technical challenges, one must find common musi-
cal ground on which the different performers may meet despite their lack of a
unifying tempo. These concrete artistic investigations—where the practice of
art functions as a research tool—may lead to new kinds of collaborative creative
practices and to extended collaborative performing practices.

a c Kno Wledg M en ts
For the long-lasting study of the music of Luigi Nono and for their generous
insights in Nono’s creative thinking I wish to warmly thank Nuria Schoenberg
Nono (Foundation Archivio Luigi Nono), André Richard (Experimental Studio
of the SWR Freiburg), Jürg Stenzl (University of Salzburg), Wolfgang Motz
(Musikhochschule Freiburg) and Erika Schaller (Foundation Archivio Luigi
Nono). For his support in the making of the Critical Edition I am thankful to
Peter Dejans (Orpheus Institute, Ghent). For their active engagement and sup-
port towards the performance of the orchestral version I am sincerely thank-
ful to Peter Rundel, Harry Vogt (WDR), Helmut Lachenmann, and Giovanni
Morelli (to whom my orchestration is posthumously dedicated).

References
Assis, Paulo de. 2006. Luigi Nonos Wende: zu seinen Kompositionen: Liebeslied, . . .
Zwischen Como una ola de fuerza y luz sofferte onde serene . . ., Fragmente—
und . . . sofferte onde serene . . . 2 vols. Stille, An Diotima. Kassel: Bärenreiter.
Hofheim, Germany: Wolke. Nono, Luigi. 1977. . . . sofferte onde serene . . ..
———. 2013. “Exploring Multi- Milan: Ricordi. 2nd ed. published 1992
Temporalities: An Orchestration of (Milan: Ricordi).
Luigi Nono’s . . . sofferte onde serene . . ..” In ———. 2001. Scritti e colloqui. Edited by
Proceedings of the International Symposium on Angela Ida de Benedictis and Veniero
Performance Science 2013, edited by Aaron Rizzardi. 2 vols. Milan: Ricordi; Lucca:
Williamon and Werner Goebl, 777–82. LIM.
Brussels: Association Européenne des Rancière, Jacques. 2004. The Politics of
Conservatoires, Académies de Musique Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible.
et Musikhochschulen (AEC). Translated by Gabriel Rockhill. London:
Linden, Werner. 1989. Luigi Nonos Weg zum Continuum. First published 2000 as Le
Streichquartett: Vergleichende Analysen partage du sensible: Esthétique et politique

210
 Revisiting Luigi Nono’s Suffered, Serene Waves

(Paris: La Fabrique). Studien zu seiner Musik. Zürich: Atlantis.

Rockhill, Gabriel. 2004. “Glossary of �i�ek, Slavoj. (2004) 2012. Organs without
Technical Terms.” In Rancière 2004. Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences.
Stenzl, Jürg, ed.. 1975. Luigi Nono: Texte, Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

211
 On Kagel’s Experimental
Sound Producers:
An Illustrated Interview with
a Historical Performer

Luk Vaes
Orpheus Research Centre in Music

From 1968 to 1970, Mauricio Kagel worked on Acustica, “for experimental sound
producers and loudspeakers.” In the introduction to the score, he defines the
term “experimental sound producers” by describing the attitude needed by the
performers who will play them: “The casting of the piece calls for unorthodox
musicians who are prepared to extend the frontiers of their craft” (Kagel 1970,
129). This concept is especially interesting in the light of how the composition
was “made.” Kagel did not compose it himself in the strict sense, but rather did
so through a particular type of collaborative process with musicians. The sound
producers were experimented with in the warehouse that Kagel had shared
with members of his Cologne Ensemble for New Music since the mid-1960s.
The composer would typically observe musicians such as Christoph Caskel,
Wilhelm Bruck, and Theodor Ross as they explored the potential of his ideas,
take notes of these often extensive sessions, and then decide on the best way(s)
to make music with this or that object, as well as on how and what to notate.
For music that Kagel made on the basis of such collaborative pro-
cesses, the word “composition” is best understood through the literal meaning
that Kagel himself expressed a liking for, namely “put together.”1 The score of
Acustica is no more than a catalogue of actions, the choice and structuring of
which is left to performers. The often inconclusive way that the actions them-
selves are notated further shows that Kagel offers the performers materials that
require further experimentation. But, however meticulously the performance

1 “I consider myself as a composer who takes the word ‘componere’ seriously, namely ‘to put togeth-
er.’ When one has learnt that, one can use sounding and non-sounding materials. You can compose
with actors, cups, buses and oboes, and finally also put together films” (quoted in Kirnbauer 2009,
15, my translation; Ich betrachte mich als Komponist, der das Wort “componere” Ernst nimmt, also,
“zusammensetzen.” Wenn man das gelernt hat, kann mann klingende und nicht-klingende Materialen
benutzen. Sie können mit Schauspielern, mit Tassen, Omnibussen und Oboen komponieren und
schließlich auch Filme zusammensetzen).

213
 Luk Vaes

practice is notated in the score, present-day musicians are quickly confronted

with questions regarding how exactly to push their artistic boundaries.
Since Kagel’s concept of experimental sound producers was worked out on
the basis of personal experimentation that took place almost half a century ago,
the key to understanding the performance practice of this type of music-mak-
ing lies in the experiences of the original musicians. As one of the original per-
formers of Acustica and many other works by Kagel, Theodor Ross was happy
to elaborate on the performance of experimental sound producers in Acustica.2
The interview is accompanied by a video montage of a workshop on perform-
ing Acustica that he gave during the Orpheus Research Festival in October 2012,
accessible online.3

LUK VAES. I want to ask about the idea of “Modell” in the score of Acustica.
There are actions that are described precisely, that have to be played exactly as
notated, and actions that serve as a model. How was it decided that an action is
to be performed exactly or as a model?
THEODOR ROSS. Certainly, the concept was that he tried to notate a tem-
poral course of events that is self-sufficient. When, for instance, he makes a
model like this [figure 1], he merely describes something.

Fig. 1
After each “bluii,” there should be a small fermata; one sees a relative regularity
but nevertheless slight differences, and the impulse with which one does this
should continuously change. Mezzo forte, pianissimo, pianississimo, forte, “boaf,”

2 The interview was conducted at Ross’s home on 29 August 2012 and translated from German to English
by Luk Vaes in collaboration with Ross.
3 Video illustrations for this article are accessible online at http://www.orpheusinstituut.be/anthology/
repository

214

Figure 1: Mauricio Kagel, Acustica, 70, thunder sheet.

 On Kagel’s Experimental Sound Producers

ah, still louder, “blaff ” . . . But where does the musical power lie? The musician
that tries to play this—in earnest, away from the score—must achieve a differ-
ent attitude. The complete body has to express this, while he only has “blaff.”
And the resulting sound has nothing to do with it: he can make a mezzo forte
that comes out as forte or as fortissimo. Or he will try a fortissimo that comes out
as mezzo piano. Nevertheless, there is a shape, because as a musician he follows a
concrete task. And that is where the tension is. So, now he can perform this: it
is his job, he’s been trained for it, he knows how to do it and can count on this
ability. And when he plays this, this tool in this adequate form, so that it can
sound and that he can operate it, then nothing else is to be demanded from
him. But, in the moment that one of the other players makes a “chrui chrui
bluii,” he can link to that, and, to do so, prolong a pause to now effectively put
in a “bluii”—in that moment it immediately becomes music. It belongs to the
idea of free interchange. But, there is a rather long series of these “bluiis,” and
it could be that, when he stands there on stage, he can’t look at the notes. I got
the idea during a performance, as I had not played the part before, to hold the
sheet in front of my head. That way, I could play marvellously and still look at
the score [laughs]. And then Kagel said, “That’s fun, we’ll always do it like that,
from now on.” Just hold it in front of the head, then the sheet becomes the
head, and so the head says “bluii, bluii.” And so the theatre starts.
VAES. How should such models be studied?
ROSS. You first have to realise it, and when you can do it, you can leave it.
Because now you put what you have learnt in relation to all that is around you.
And there, freedom starts. But not before you have done it, after. Because then
you can handle it responsibly. Or you can then easily realise this pattern or a
remembered form of it. In the moment that I remain alone with the thunder
sheet, while a colleague has just decided “Oh, I’ll let him do a solo,” I return
back to the model. This preformed, readily available tension can stand on its
own. And what I then don’t know, because I don’t look for my colleague’s eyes
wondering “What is he doing right now?,” is that he—I don’t know—has taken
some instrument and just thinks “This is exciting, I actually don’t really have
to do anything else right now, I’ll stay like this, I’ll remain here . . . his solo still
works, it still contributes” . . . “Platsch!,” he decides to make a sound. So, at
some time, while one is playing this, there is of course another tension that was
prepared and built up somewhere else on the stage, which emerges to kick in
suddenly. Then it really becomes fun, because one can deal with this so freely.
VAES. But why, in such a chamber-music situation, are not all actions models?
Why are some actions precise?
ROSS. There are smaller musical elements that relate to what is on the
tape. So, for instance, you have this toy trombone passage—“Didadaadaa,
Diedadaaa, Daadadaa, ohhh” [see Kagel 1970, 44]. A very similar thing is sung
by [William] Pearson4 on the tape. And I know beforehand when that appears
on the tape, and so I will play it either four minutes afterward or one and a half

4 William Pearson (1934–95) was an American baritone who lived and worked in Cologne. His repertoire
ranged from Bach to the avant-garde, including works written for him by Ligeti, Busotti, and Schnebel.

215
 Luk Vaes

minutes before, or start it in such a way that he suddenly continues together

with me [laughs]. Of course, one has to have heard the tape, more than once,
even. But even when you have not listened to the tape, or when you come into
the situation—and even after twenty concerts, you can still end up there—
where you are so far into the tape, which is over one hour long, that, suddenly, a
passage appears that you haven’t heard in three years, you can nevertheless deal
with it. It is a basic form of making music, based on the possibilities offered by
the concrete situation. Imagine that, here, an old clock ticks, and, there, seven
people walk by. And suddenly, you think “why am I so fascinated by that guy,
now? I mean, I see seven people over there, all walking, why do I focus on him?”
Suddenly you notice: because he is coincidentally synchronous with the clock.
That’s where the tension of the passage comes from: it has nothing to do with
him—anyone else would have done it too, as long as he was synchronous. This
form of contingency, of things that just happen, of course takes place when
three, four, five people are on stage. And this reference is wonderful, and you
can make great music with it. One operates the tape, another has been play-
ing the rods [see figure 2]—“plong, plong, plong”—then he takes another rod,
throws it in the box, and the tape does “bschbschsbcsh.” And he throws one
straight in there—bull’s eye, great! He takes the next one, bull’s eye, wonderful!
When he takes the next one, at the moment when it hits the box, the tape is
quiet. He throws . . . “klack,” the tape is there again, but now two degrees louder
. . . Or the tape stops, only the once, when he misses. Mostly it is so that I could
always make a straight hit, but I liked to miss once or twice, because people love
a miss, no? [Laughs.]

Fig. 2

216

Figure 2. Mauricio Kagel, Acustica, 106, impact box, pan pipes.

 On Kagel’s Experimental Sound Producers

In the score it says to put the impact box at a one-and-a-half- to two-and-a-half-

metre distance. During performances it was of course always more: up to six
metres, depending on the size of the stage [laughs], because it simply enhances
the tension. And Kagel said, “Naturally, as much as there is space, and as much
as is fun.” But, as simple as the process of aiming and hitting seems, a lot can
go wrong in just those simple actions. For instance, when the stick hits the rim
of the box, it ricochets off and ends up outside the box. And you have to accept
that.
Christoph [Caskel5] was a master at it, with his small hand-cymbals on the
table [see figure 3]. When someone made something really elegiac, minutes
on end, for instance, Christoph was good at waiting for the right moment.
Sometimes it took a while, but then, somewhere a simple “klack” comes, and
then one does “bloab,” the nail box falls open [see figure 4], and the scene ends.
That means that someone has decided otherwise.

Fig. 3 Fig. 4

For the audience it is completely unclear: “Has he played all the time, waiting
until the other one plays?” No, that just happened. And when it does, it has this
immediacy, as with humour, right? Humour cannot be enforced: it has to come
immediately, so that it has this tension that makes it enjoyable. When one plans
it and makes notes, “then you do like this, and when I am there, then . . .”—
painful! Right away, it becomes bad new music, because, together with it, you
also get the reflection on the way it works. Straight away, this type of composi-
tion falls apart. That the performances with larger groups always soon stopped

5 Christoph Caskel (b.1932) was professor of percussion at the Cologne Hochschule. He participated in
the premieres of many important works by composers including Kagel and Stockhausen.

217

Figure 3. Mauricio Kagel, Acustica, 32, hand-cymbals.

Figure 4. Mauricio Kagel, Acustica, 82, box of nails.
 Luk Vaes

occurring has to do with the fact that there were then always two or three peo-
ple that brought way too many soloistic vanities into the piece. Too great a chal-
lenge for minds that are a little too small. Because it is a big challenge, really,
to just stand up and say: “It is possible, in a piece of twenty-five minutes, that
a passage comes where I stop playing, and for twelve or fifteen minutes there
is no passage where it makes sense that I play. And so, that is what I must do,
that is what I have to endorse.” It is the inner freedom to deal with that and not
need it at all. Christoph may be waiting for the moment when you make a big
accent, and you may never make that. You need a theatrical consciousness to
jump in with an action that can be meaningful. You can try and plan, “So, we’ll
let those three play with the stop watches until then and then and then, and
these, here, play together for fifteen minutes, and you shall each pause for five
minutes.” But if you succeed in making a pause of thirty seconds, then you had a
good rehearsal [laughs]. It is incredibly difficult simply to let go, to let it happen,
and not to have the feeling “I do too little” or “what am I doing here?” It takes
an unbelievable amount of work, listening and observing. One does not get the
idea that one plays a part, because one constantly hears the sum.
VAES. In the introduction, it says that the actions are “half-scenic.” What did
he mean by that?
ROSS. “Half-scenic” means that there is a scenic dimension, but that the
scenic never really dominates. It’s not about an actor who feels good and says
“huoi” [laughs]. Then you have what I once saw, when seven, eight musicians
were on stage, each thinking of themselves as the greatest musical clown of all
times. And it was awful, such a mess! [Laughs.] It really had nothing to do with
the original idea anymore. When a performer feels good with the cheek-drum
and believes that he must perform a nice passage, and that he has to look good,
and that he should show what he can do, without realising what is in the score,
then it turns into an utter failure.

Fig. 5

218

Figure 5. Mauricio Kagel, Acustica, 57, cheek-drum.

 On Kagel’s Experimental Sound Producers

There is music to be made! There is no musician who, when he doesn’t have

anything to do, can just put his instrument down. Just as if: “I don’t need this
pen anymore, I now put it there.” It just doesn’t work that way. Rather: “I have
had this object, I have made ‘pff ’ with it, or ‘pip’ or ‘plip,’ and now it is over. And
even the moment when I stop handling it must certainly be scenic musically.”
Not just, “I now stop, because I have been through my model, and here I must
. . .” That doesn’t work, just doesn’t work. “Zack,” now an accent sounds, or
nothing happens, doesn’t matter, but the decision comes and after that you
either get the next instrument or freeze. But this is hard, because a musician is
not taught this.
VAES. How realistic, then, are the “fifty-six” pages, where the whole group is
supposed to play? [See figure 6.]

Fig. 6

ROSS. Well, we stopped doing that. I had a really tough discussion with him
about it.
VAES. Was it not really meant to be played, then?
ROSS. No, no, it was just that, on the one hand he was very consistent and
meticulous, on the other hand also scared. Here you have this man who writes
these things and lets the WDR6 make the sound producers that he invented. On
paper, he indicates very precise particulars—shapes, measurements, materials,
etc.—though he doesn’t really care, only that it sounds, but he has to give the
makers the type of information that they need in order to know what to build.
There’s the danger that the size of a sound producer is based on the shape of

6 The WDR (Westdeutschen Runfunk—West-German Radio), with its headquarters in Cologne, commis-
sioned Acustica.

219

Figure 6. Mauricio Kagel, Acustica, 56c, ad lib.

 Luk Vaes

his hands, even though he is not going to be the one playing it—the final object
may be awkward for me to handle; the whole production is costly and sched-
uled to happen in the next two weeks. And then comes the moment, “so, what
if they can’t do it, those six people? They have never done a concert together.
What if we now rehearse for three days and I see that the whole concept doesn’t
work. What do I do then?” The tape alone will not make do, right? The “fif-
ty-six” pages are more a matter of insurance. A composed insurance, like with
these optically complex things such as the conveyor belt that carries an instru-
ment from one player to another—the communication between musicians,
so to speak [see figure 7]. But what if it falls off, at the end of the belt, which
also is funny in a way. We don’t use that anymore. It was another additional
idea, which was without a doubt necessary in the first performances, but which
quickly became something along the line of “OK, but then we can just as well
build a big machine.” Or have sixteen technicians working alongside the musi-
cians. It didn’t make sense anymore.

Fig. 7

VAES. You were critical of such things?

ROSS. Yes. This part [the “fifty-six” pages], which is in fact a somewhat more
precisely composed Prima Vista,7 corrupts the idea.
VAES. And the trust in the musicians?
ROSS. The trust in the musicians, yes! Well, he always repeated “yes, but,”
“but,” “but still, there can be situations . . .” That was the thing: there can be
situations in which it does make sense to do that. I mean, for him, it was a ques-
tion of having control. Like Stockhausen, controlling the tape and the instru-

7 Prima Vista, for slides, at least four performers, and an undetermined number of sound sources (com-
posed 1962/64, first performed in 1969), calls for musicians to interpret projections of score sheets that
feature indications of the number of sound events, their dynamics (specific levels, such as p, fff, etc., and
changes between levels), and manner of articulation.

220

Figure 7. Mauricio Kagel, Acustica, 113, conveyer belt.

 On Kagel’s Experimental Sound Producers

mental amplification from among the audience, so that when something goes
awry he can quickly intervene to reshape the whole and reconsider how to go
on. The idea of security, so to speak. So we did it once, but at the next concert
he left it out. From then on, it was decided and there was no more discussion.
It was clear that this didn’t belong. Because it was simply stronger when there
is trust. And we made absolutely no arrangements: no one knew who’d start,
no one knew who’d stop, no one knew how long it would last. Nothing! We
came on stage, stood at our tables, and either started or didn’t start, and then
the thing ran its course. There were no bad performances. There were many
very good ones, some good ones, but no bad ones. Really not. Because it was so
perfect as a concept. There is no one on stage who can afford to let his personal
position gain weight and take effect. The tasks are so easy to master that they
can be realised in almost any situation. As long as you can maintain this formal
tension. That is the real difficulty. And this goes far beyond the little things that
go wrong. It is this carrying of the development as an ensemble, the playing of
this development, and then saying “Here we are at the end.” We were almost
always together at the end. Or it happened, as a sort of coda, when a misunder-
standing came up—very fascinating!—like three of us suddenly thinking “yes,
this is an ideal ending, this is it,” and the end is there, but just then Kagel or
someone else makes a very thin, small “bsschschschsch.” “Ah, it goes on, now.
Let’s see. Is this the Appendix that makes the end? That would be nice too. But
now it is already too long for it to be that way. Now we must add a little some-
thing,” “btumbambum” [laughs], and then it goes on. And then, suddenly, the
end is there, after all. There is no failing. There are only different offers that
come from two, three, or four different people. One has to be clear: there are
no mistakes that one can make, except not making music. As far as such details
go, Kagel couldn’t care less: it was unimportant to him if one had messed up in
the trombone bit and the fourth tone was the wrong one or hadn’t sounded—
that was of no interest to him at all. The crucial thing is, how do I deal with it
in the situation, and how does it proceed now? The qualities of the material
remain. That you can’t break. Like in Bach: you cannot ruin it. You can play
badly, sure, but the material is there and it is reliable. That has always been
fascinating and is still great fun today.

References
Kagel, Mauricio. 1970. Acustica. London: Theater bis zum objet trouvé.” In Der Schall:
Universal Edition. UE 18429. Mauricio Kagels Instrumentarium, edited
Kirnbauer, Martin. 2009. “‘Fundgruben’ by Michael Kunkel and Martina Papiro,
für Kagels Klangerzeuger: Vom antiken 15–28. Saarbrücken: Pfau-Verlag.

221
 Composing as a Way of
Doing Philosophy
Nicholas G. Brown
University of East Anglia

Between 2005 and 2009, I devised strategies for creating new musical works
by investigating the conventions and practices of classical music in relation to
wider themes in philosophy. Accordingly, these musical works were rooted in a
process of thinking about music as an activity, situated in a particular culture,
rather than direct experimentation with sound itself. I was interested in seeing
whether the act of composing could be reframed as a way of understanding
what it is we do when we “do” music and how musical experiences affect and
help us as we move through our daily lives.
This article comprises an account of two processes of thought concerning
classical music and its conventions that led to the creation of new work. There
are two, core statements on issues in the philosophy of music. These are inter-
laced with italicised statements on particular works, which are offered as dia-
lectical responses to the core statements.

c o nc er ts a nd Wo rK s

Stan Godlovitch’s (1998, 11) model of musical performance includes “four

primary constituents of the musical sphere.” He writes, “any standard perfor-
mance consists of sounds made by some musician instancing some musical
work for some listener.” It relies on a common method of notation being shared
by composer and performer (excepting any “special” notations peculiar to a
particular work and defined accordingly). If a composer uses such notation in
giving form to a musical idea as a work, then there is the possibility that future
performances of that work may be given by any musician who understands that
notation and has sufficient mastery over a particular sound-making technol-
ogy (a violin, for example). This model has had wide application since the late
eighteenth century.1 Essentially, it may be recognised by a division of labour: a
“gap” between composing and performing, between conceiving and delivering.

1 For an account of the rise of the professional musician in the early nineteenth century, particularly the
development of the performing musician as interpreter of precomposed works in the late 1830s, see
Rink (2002).

223
 Nicholas G. Brown

The classical concert environment therefore provides a location for the con-
templation of a musical work that is guaranteed by a fixed and stable musical
notation. The nature of the aesthetic experience enjoyed by a listener who is
prepared to contemplate what they hear is—following Kant—distinguished
from rational thinking and the practicalities of everyday life. Such musical
experience permits what Kant ([1911] 1952, 179) called “aesthetic ideas” or rep-
resentations of the imagination, which it puts into flight. And in giving rise
to aesthetic experience, it allows us to think without concepts in a way that is
ineffable, that cannot be uttered as language. In doing this, it affords “enter-
tainment where experience proves too commonplace” (ibid., 176). This discur-
sive contemplation of musical patterning is at the root of the classical concert
tradition: the composer thinks, the performer acts, and what the latter does
becomes the referent of the former’s ingenuity, as designator of text. Finally,
a tertiary entity—the audience—is listening, attending to the reified idea as
sounding object. The concert, then, is an environment for the Kantian notion
of disinterested contemplation or the invocation of a “free play” of the imag-
ination. Intellectual activity turns “inward,” towards the configurations and
patterns of sound.
My creative practice is rooted in this tradition. But the works that I
created between 2005 and 2009 explore and challenge some of its key conven-
tions. For example, An Audience with the Trees (2005) makes a parody of a pre-ex-
isting notated concert work of mine by turning it into “birdsong.” Furthermore,
in The Bravery of Women (2006), Five Actions for a Violinist (2006), and, more
recently, As I Have Now Memoyre (2008), I was particularly interested in challeng-
ing the “currency” status of the musical composition. By “currency,” I refer to
the open availability of a work for performance by any performer in the context
of a concert. Abstractly, works of this status follow a paradigm that might be
written: “[title-identity] for [instrument-technology/voice].” The transitivity of
“for” (the sense in which [title-identity] passes over to and affects the [instru-
ment-technology/voice]) suggests that where a particular instrument-technol-
ogy is required for its delivery, a particular performer is not. The possibility of
a necessary relation between the circumstances of the work’s creation and the
idiosyncrasies of any particular performer’s practice is not asserted. And so the
work makes its first presentation to the performer’s sense of sight, in the capac-
ity of notation.

***
Vivaldi’s Menagerie (2003) / An Audience with the Trees (2005)

In 2003, I was commissioned by the Orchestra of St John’s, London, to write a violin concerto.
My response, Vivaldi’s Menagerie (2003), addresses the factitious representations of natural
sounds in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons by reworking notated material from “L’Estate” (“Summer”)
and “La Primavera” (“Spring”). As mandates for future performance, the musical scores of the
Four Seasons set people (with their stringed technologies) the aspirational task of becoming
other than they are. They give performative instructions for the control of wooden-mechanical

224
 Composing as a Way of Doing Philosophy

constructions in order that they might summon the presence of birds, generate bolts of lightning,
and turn our hearts towards weeping shepherds.

The Four Seasons propose the transfiguration of anthrophonic sounds of stringed

instruments into biophonic and geophonic effectuations. The technological achievement
represented by the mechanics of a seventeenth-century violin aspires to (re)create nature itself.
But why should a composer wish to make a violinist sound like a bird? Or is Vivaldi suggesting,
with the famous trills that open “La Primavera,” that the sounds of nature are imitations of
the idiosyncratic sounds of stringed instruments? Notwithstanding the confusion, Vivaldi’s
Menagerie does not aspire to replicate the natural world. Rather, it aspires to replicate the work
of the human world of fine art—namely, the Four Seasons.

In 2005, I made a sound installation for a woodland environment, An Audience with the
Trees, that is simply an electronic “performance” of the notated score of Vivaldi’s Menagerie.
An Audience with the Trees was originally designed to be installed across two areas of
Addison’s Walk, a wooded forest path in the gardens of Magdalen College, Oxford. At two
discrete locations along Addison’s Walk there are two tree trunks in the shape of a chair. At the
first site, five bird boxes, each containing a loudspeaker, were affixed to five trees near to one of
the tree-trunk chairs. Each speaker emitted the sound of a bird performing one of the lines from
Vivaldi’s Menagerie. At the second site, a single bird box containing the bird performing the
solo violin part was fixed to a tree near the second chair.

An Audience with the Trees makes a critique of the stationary act of sitting—in this
case on a tree trunk—and listening to musical works. This act identifies the classical music
concert, particularly its history of presenting works as objects for intellectual contemplation.
Furthermore, the separation between soloist and ensemble expands a theme of ontological
restitution: the solo bird-violin longs to return to unity (the proverbial nest/accompanying
ensemble). Similarly, its individuation symbolises the task of An Audience with the Trees,
which is to “return” the Four Seasons to nature and resolve its mimetic aspirations. The task is
always foiled, though, as the Four Seasons has been mediated through Vivaldi’s Menagerie,
which is not a biophonic thing of nature, but a musical work—a product of the human brain’s
inclination to elaboration and development. And so the birds would seem to aspire to the
condition of music, as all kinds of art are said to have done in the early twentieth century. The
following quotation is from Plotinus, Enneads, V.8.1 (1991, 41):

Still the arts are not to be slighted on the ground that they create by imitation of
natural objects; for, to begin with, these natural objects are themselves imitations.

***

t he s i gh t oF s o undi ng

Writing on “the austerity of the concert hall,” Harry Partch (1974, 53–4) quotes
D. H. Lawrence on attitudes to painting, insofar as they reveal a fear of the pro-
creative body: “In viewing paintings, he maintains, we ‘are only undergoing cer-
ebral excitation . . . The deeper responses, down in the intuitive and instinctive
body, are not touched.’” And quoting Lawrence on visual appreciation, Partch
develops a connection between theology, epistemology, and the concert: “The
history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of
the procreative body for the glorification of the spirit, the mental conscious-

225
 Nicholas G. Brown

ness” (Lawrence quoted in ibid., 54).2 Within the traditions of classical music,
the act of perceiving musical experience has developed into one that has at its
root the exclusion of elements of visuality.3 “To take as music in all instances
only what is heard,” writes Alan Durant (1984, 87), “is to abstract, and in that
process inevitably idealise, an acoustic dimension of practices always and only
realisable within definitions and limits of a given scenario.” This modern incli-
nation to divorce visuality from aural experience has, like Wagner’s mystic gulf,
helped propagate a mythology of music’s origin.4 As music moved away from
the reality of the sounding body, becoming an ideal world of the imagination,
musical making became acting according to a scientific superego, a task of
understanding linguistic-structural notations in a score, rather than conceiv-
ing formation through activity.
A compositional project that addresses bodily gestures of music making nor-
mally subsumed within very short frames of time returns to the fundaments of
aesthetic experience. With digital video, these figurative actions may be cap-
tured and investigated in relation to the totality of the sensory field, as they
occur, in a location that is, to quote Roland Barthes (1977, 153), “not the concert
hall, but the stage on which the musicians pass.” Video is able to illustrate the
bodily expression-responses of the musical performer that are a consequence
of prior musical action. The lens allows access to, as Walter Benjamin (1968,
746) put it, “an immense and unexpected field of action.” For Benjamin, “a dif-
ferent nature speaks to the camera than opens to the naked eye . . . Even if
one has a general knowledge of the way people walk, one knows nothing of a
person’s posture during the fractional second of a stride” (ibid.). Furthermore,
in commenting on Benjamin’s theory of mechanical art and writing on “the
micro-mechanics of meaning,” Noël Carroll (1998, 123) cites the cinema as
“training the audience by means of close-ups to be attentive to meaning of
small, putatively ‘unconscious’ movements, like agitated fingers.”
The sight of sounding moves towards an epistemological account of music
as embodied action that has been forestalled by an emphasis on a notational
means of preserving (and reflecting upon) the production of sound. Video is
a tool that underlines the significance of seeing in the perception of musical
experience and gives access to peculiarities of musico-performative gestures—
the subconscious bodily responses enacted as a result of pre-composed com-
positional ideas. It allows us “to pay attention to the small movements—the
slips and gestures that make up the psychopathology of everyday life” (ibid.).
Effectively, to understand music visually is to reinforce Merleau-Ponty’s thesis
that our fundamental contact with the world is pre-reflective. Non-notational
appreciation of music as experience echoes aspects of his critique of philosophy

2 Partch gives an account of the elision of music as a corporeal expression with reference to Christian
theology in the same volume (1974, 14–20).
3 See Durant (1984, 86) for a historical overview of the role played by the eye in perceiving musical perfor-
mance.
4 Durant (1984, 94) evaluates Wagner’s half-covered orchestra pit as contributing to the restoration of
“the formerly theological mystery of musical revelation, which becomes subsequently, however, exactly
artistic vision.”

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 Composing as a Way of Doing Philosophy

insofar as it has ignored “the experience of rationality,” which is the way in which
thought arises from “the pre-predicative life of consciousness” (Merleau-Ponty
1962, xv).
The visuality of musical performance makes an article of biographical dis-
closure. It relates to the emergence of the subject who performed, showing that
subject’s physical encounters in the world of things. The use of video as a tech-
nology of contemporary composition arguably continues “the transformation
of arts into meta-arts or media” that Susan Sontag (1977, 149) identified in “the
tape-based projects of composers like Cage, Stockhausen and Reich,” stating
that they offered “logical extensions of the model established by photography.”
Video makes it possible to examine the diversity of gestures a person brings
into being when making a musical experience, the traces of which are patterns
of sound. It illuminates the introversion of individuated, genre-specific musi-
cal practice, creating new ambitions for transdisciplinary artistic endeavours
and a new sense of unity between formerly discrete kinds of art. Like photogra-
phy, it challenges the role of the creator-specialist by refusing to place restric-
tions on our participation in aesthetic pleasure (see ibid., 7). And so it issues a
challenge to a musical culture entwined in notational encoding that can only
be unscrambled by those who embody the training.

***
The Bravery of Women (2006) / Five Actions for a Violinist (2006)

According to Egyptian legend, Typhon divided the body of his brother, Osiris, into fourteen
pieces and scattered them across Egypt. Osiris’s wife, Isis, set out to gather the pieces of the body
and put them together again in order to become pregnant. In 2006, I made a transdisciplinary
performance-piece, The Bravery of Women, for a violinist, Monica Germino, that uses the
legend of Isis and Osiris as a metaphor for the process of rehearsing and performing a musical
work. In The Bravery of Women, the violinist reassembles fragmented phrases from a Bach
sonata. Just as Isis rebuilt the human form, so the violinist rebuilds a musical work.

During the early stages of composing The Bravery of Women, I wrote a series of five
text-scores, Five Actions for a Violinist. Monica Germino gave a staged performance of these
scores, which I recorded on a digital camera as hundreds of still images. The process of rebuilding
the performance by aligning the non-contiguous still images on a computer opened access to
a wider “field” of musical action. For if we think about music in terms of physical action and
sound as the consequence of that action, we may consider musical performance in relation to the
experiences of our daily lives. Sounds may be understood as the result of paths traced in moving
from one state of being to another, like the changing frames of a film reel. This reconstructed
“performance” on film was subsequently integrated within a longer film that accompanies live
performances of The Bravery of Women.

227
 Nicholas G. Brown

References
Barthes, Roland. 1977. “Musica Practica.” In Oxford: Oxford University Press. First
Image, Music, Text, edited and translated published 1790 as Kritik der Urteilskraft.
by Stephen Heath, 149–54. London: This translation first published 1911
Fontana. Essay originally published in (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
French in 1970 under the same title (L’Arc Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962. Phenomenology
40). of Perception. Translated by Colin Smith.
Benjamin, Walter. 1968. “The Work of Art in London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. First
the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” published 1945 as Phénoménologie de la
Translated by Harry Zohn. In Film Theory perception (Paris: Gallimard).
and Criticism: Introductory Readings, edited Partch, Harry. 1974. Genesis of a Music: An
by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, Account of a Creative Work, Its Roots and Its
5th ed., 1999, 731–51. New York: Oxford Fulfilments. 2nd ed. New York: Da Capo.
University Press. Essay originally titled Plotinus. 1991. Enneads. Translated by
“Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner Stephen MacKenna. Abridged by
technischen Reproduzierbarkeit,” first John Dillon. London: Penguin. This
published 1936 in French translation. translation first published 1917–30
Carroll, Noël. 1998. A Philosophy of Mass (London: Medici Society).
Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press / Rink, John. 2002. “The Profession of Music.”
Clarendon Press. In The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-
Durant, Alan. 1984. Conditions of Music. Century Music, edited by Jim Samson,
London: Macmillan. 55–86. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Godlovitch, Stan. 1998. Musical Performance: A Press.
Philosophical Study. London: Routledge. Sontag, Susan. 1977. On Photography.
Kant, Immanuel. (1911) 1952. The Critique of London: Penguin.
Judgement. Translated by J. C. Meredith.

228
 Cycles of Experimentation
and the Creative Process
of Music Composition
Hans Roels
Orpheus Research Centre in Music

During a research project starting in 2011 with eight contemporary composers I

was surprised by one of the composers who created his music in a linear way with
a very low number of revisions, initial plans, or explorations. Although there are
popular images of composers who rely on inspiration instead of labouring for
expressive solutions, I do not know of any empirical study that describes a crea-
tive process with such a low amount of experimentation. Research into the cre-
ative process in music composition is a rather young discipline and the number
of studies is limited. According to Sloboda in 1995 (Sloboda 2001) there are
“still fewer than ten serious studies of the compositional process, involving in
total, fewer than twenty composers.” Without doubt this number has grown in
the past decade but not dramatically. Thus, it could be that composing with a
minimum of experimentation takes place but is not yet studied.
In this article I describe the creative process of the Belgian composer Frederik
Neyrinck in composing Aphorisme IX, after clarifying the method of this study.1
I focus on the low amount of experimentation and provide a tentative expla-
nation. But a reflection on these results is necessary and I argue that the few,
loose experiments in the creative process of this work are possibly connected
to previous works and their processes. Thus, the starting question, Is there any
experimentation in the creative process of Aphorisme IX? is to be replaced by
the double question, Is there a meaningful chain of experiments during this
process and how does it relate to the creative process of this one composition?
The meaning of the term experimentation in this article should be situated
within the context of the creative process of music composition (CPMC), the
process during which a composer is composing music and performs a range of
mental and physical activities such as forming, realising, adapting, playing or
evaluating ideas. A similar use of the term experimentation is found in Katz and
Gardner (2012). I consider experimentation to be a dynamic and transforma-
tive process between mind and matter. It refers to searching for activities by the
composer through which he or she tries to transform an idea or feeling into an

1 CD, track 9, is a recording of Neyrinck’s Aphorisme IX.

229
 Hans Roels

expressive figure that can become a (part of a) composition. Experimentation

has a double-sided nature: it implies a coming together of cognitive/emotive
processes on the one hand and actions on the other. This has important impli-
cations for the research method used to study experimentation. An action
that is unexpected is not necessarily an experiment; for example, it may have
an external cause. A composer can change ideas during the creative process
because he or she receives the news that the instrumentation has changed.
Thus if one only relies on the data produced by these actions (sketches, score
versions, . . .), one risks labelling changes or new elements as experimentation.
On the other hand, if one only relies on what composers thought (and thus use
verbal accounts or interviews), one risks labelling every new plan or idea as an
experiment. Therefore this study builds upon a combination of different data
and not just on one kind of data. This data-rich approach is also found in stud-
ies by Newman (2008), Donin and Theureau (2007), and Collins (2007).
Moreover, experimentation is not a stationary phenomenon: it changes con-
stantly. This is evident if one looks at the action component of experimentation:
the traces (sketches, scores, . . .) of these actions often change visibly during the
CPMC. But what the composer thinks, imagines, and feels while composing
also changes during the creative process. There are different theories on the
CPMC (Bennett 1976, Sloboda 1985, Collins 2005) but the transformative rela-
tion between what is going on in the head of the composer and what he or she
is doing is a common element. Thus, a researcher needs to be very conscious of
time gaps between the traces of an action of an experiment and the reports on
the cognitive-emotive component of the same experiment.

d es i gn o F the stu d y

The study of the creative work of Neyrinck, then a twenty-seven-year-old com-

poser from the Flanders region in Belgium, is part of a larger study of the crea-
tive process of a group of composers. In 2011 twenty-four composers were asked
to produce a short composition for this study. Eight agreed to do so, Neyrinck
among them. All the contacted composers were selected because they wrote
contemporary-classical or experimental music and because they had substan-
tial professional experience with composing music for acoustic instruments.
Between November 2011 and July 2012 the eight composers were interviewed,
for the first time before the performance of the short compositions (the “pre-in-
terview”) and the second time after the first performance (the “post-interview”).
The study took place in a naturalistic setting: the composer could compose at
home or anywhere he or she wished, and could do this in the manner of their
own preference. The only unusual element for a naturalistic setting was the
requirement included in the commission that the work engage with the subject
of polyphony.2 In the field of Belgian contemporary classical music commissions
almost never prescribe musical features or problems: in this case, the task did.

2 Studying the CPMC of more than one composer was an important aim of this study and the task had
the advantage of creating a common starting point to study the individual trajectories of the composers.

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In this study a diverse range of data and traces were collected that shed a light
on both the cognitive-emotive and the action-based components of experi-
mentation without intruding into the creative process. Before the composers
started composing, they were asked to archive their preparatory compositional
material. When they finished the composition, the researcher assisted the com-
posers to retrieve backup files (from notation software) with previous versions
from their computer. Most of the correspondence between the researcher and
the composer happened via email which also enabled easy storage of these
messages.
Another source of information was the two interviews. These were semi-struc-
tured and contained a set of questions that was prepared in advance. The actual
interview style was open, and there was room for additional questions during
an individual interview. In general the pre-interview contained more fixed
questions (on the creative process) and gave the sketches and other traces a
memory recall function to help the composer remember the phases, decisions,
and actions within this process. The post-interview had fewer prepared ques-
tions; it tackled issues that arose from the first interview and dealt more with
the performance of the short composition. The post-interview also functioned
as a verification session. The composer was asked to clarify some data and traces
when these were unreadable, obscure or only contained partial information.
Because the creative process and experimentation are dynamic processes and
composers and other artists forget previous stages of these processes (Bennett
1976, Lubart 1994), the pre-interview was done as soon as possible after the
composer had notified the researcher that the composition was finished. This
fast timing was intended to ensure that the creative process of that composition
was still available in the memory of the composer. Neyrinck was interviewed by
me twelve days after he had sent the first draft of the score (version A2, see
below).3 The data from his creative process consisted of one paper sketch, three
digital versions in notation software, five emails, and two interviews.

e x per i M entati o n i n th e c reative pro c ess oF a ph o risM e ix

by F r eder i K n eyr i nc K

To examine the experimentation in the creative phase of Aphorisme IX, three

features were searched for in the data that capture both the “mind-matter”
duality of experimentation and its dynamism. Two features indicate that exper-
imentation can take place:
1. The number of stages and versions in the compositional process
(based on the mapping of this process) and the differences between
these stages
2. The references that the composer makes to new elements, searches,
or experimentations

3 This is the same as one day after Neyrinck had sent me an edited score with a title page, remarks, and
individual parts.

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 Hans Roels

The third feature indicates the opposite, the absence of experimentation:

3. The references by the composer to the use of existing procedures and
concepts
The separate features are not an argument for greater or less experimentation
and its small or large impact because they can have other causes,4 but the simul-
taneous presence of all three features is a strong indicator for experimentation.
Thus, if I found a small number of versions with no big differences between
them, not many new elements and the application of existing procedures in the
compositional process, I conclude that not a lot of experimentation took place
in the creative phase of this work.
The mapping of the compositional process is quite straightforward in the
case of Neyrinck composing Aphorisme IX. The original idea was to compose a
lamento because a close relative had died. There are no sketches of this first idea
(A1) but the composer says that he played around with this idea on the piano.5
Approximately two weeks later came the next version (A2), written down in a
paper sketch. The original lamento idea (A1) had one slow tempo; version A2
has alternating fast and slow sections. The composer explains this change by
describing the lamento idea as a bit too sentimental, and adds that a composi-
tion structure built on two alternating tempi would work better than relying on
one. Asking explicitly in the interviews for more details about the lamento idea
(A1) and for other ideas before A2, delivered no additional information.
The following version (A3), ten days later, is in fact not a real version, it con-
tains almost no changes compared to A2; it is simply a digital copy of the previ-
ous one, transcribed into notation software. The next two versions were made
three months later, after the first performance (and because a second perfor-
mance was planned). Again they contain no fundamental changes but refine-
ments, according to the scores and to what the composer says in the post-inter-
view and in emails. The viola da gamba is substituted for the cello6 but the part
itself is left almost unchanged. To improve the resonating quality of the piano,
some chords are thickened, transposed an octave higher, or their dynamic level
is adjusted. In general the compositional process developed in a linear way with
one important difference between the first and the second version.
The next feature in examining the experimentation is the statements by the
composer on new elements and searches while composing Aphorisme IX. He
mentions two elements that were new for him: the viola da gamba and the piz-
zicato secco in the piano part (on the strings inside the piano). But the new-
ness of the baroque instrument did not have serious consequences while com-
posing. Neyrinck himself mentions a previous composition for cello solo that
served as a guideline to write for the viola da gamba and the versions A4 and A5

4 The lack of versions could be caused by the loss of paper or digital sketches, statements by the compos-
er on the newness of his work could be caused by the deliberate creation of an artistic self-image, etc.
5 Possibly one early paper sketch might have got lost. Neyrinck mentions this sketch in the pre-interview
and immediately looked for them in his sketch book but without result. It is unclear if the sketch ever
existed.
6 The cello was substituted for the viola da gamba because the trio that played in the second performance
contained a cello and no gamba.

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 Cycles of Experimentation and the Creative Process of Music Composition

simply replace the gamba with the cello without any compositional changes.
The pizzicato secco occurs twice during the work and clearly is a micro-struc-
tural event.
In the post-interview an instance of a searching activity by the composer is
found. After the first rehearsal and performance he was dissatisfied with the
effect of the piano resonances (obtained by holding silent keys down). These
were too silent according to him and this was not unimportant because these
soft sounds create continuity within the slow sections. The post-interview took
place in the middle of rehearsals for a second performance of the work and the
composer talks about attempts at home and in rehearsals to solve this problem
(by playing the chords that trigger the resonance louder, by adding notes to
these chords or by changing the number of silent keys).
In contrast to the low number of statements on new elements or searching
activities, there are fifteen references in the two interviews where the composer
says that he used an existing procedure, technique, or concept. Four of these
statements are very general, for example: “since a few years I always use the
same pitch organisation system.” Three others are a bit more specific because
the composer uses a general description of his older works—for example, “in
other works I have also used these piano resonances.” On eight occasions he
makes a link between the current, short composition and a specific, older com-
position, of which he mentions the title or other characteristics. The items that
he had previously used in other works are numerous and diverse. They consist
of both micro- and macro-structural features such as:
• the use of tempo contrasts and tempo relations between sections to
structure a composition
• the use of instrumentation to shape the different sections in a
composition
• the creation of a sound texture in which the instruments blend
together and the creation of small differences within this overall
texture by individual sound events
• the technique of creating resonances (sympathetic strings) on the
piano by holding down certain keys
• the specific way of composing for the flute (instrumentation)
• the pitch organisation (melodic and harmonic)
• the compositional practice of establishing a time scheme (with sec-
tions) at the beginning of the creative process
Moreover the composer also referred to his other works when talking about
aspirations that he had while composing this work. He specifically mentioned
his fascination with obtaining a brevity of expression (through writing short
compositions) and the hope to find an original way of writing for the piano in
contemporary music.
To summarise, our analysis has found many arguments that Neyrinck was
reapplying many procedures that he had used in previous works and that the
creative process of this work was linear with a minimum of searching activities
deviating from this straight path. But there were two instances of experimen-
tation (the version A1 and the attempts to solve the piano resonance problem).

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 Hans Roels

In conclusion, while composing this work he was doing this with a low amount
of experimentation.
But maybe Neyrinck conceived this composition as a technical exercise and
therefore didn’t spend a lot of time on searching and experimenting? As men-
tioned above, the commission to compose this work contained a specific musi-
cal task (on polyphony). But on two occasions in the interview Neyrinck clearly
says that this composition wasn’t just a technical task. Answering a question on
the polyphonic task in the commission, he replied: “I didn’t always think about
these voices, I have mainly thought about the music, how can I create a nice
piece, that is my main aim.” Moreover, Neyrinck has chosen to have the work
performed a second time, a strange practice if he considered it just an exercise.
Another objection against this analysis could state that the short duration of
the composition explains why Neyrinck experimented less. Creating a one-min-
ute work demands less effort than for one that lasts ten or twenty minutes.
However, the link between shortness and lack of experimentation is difficult
to maintain because in the same study more and often contradicting ideas and
versions could be traced with some of the other composers.7 Also, for Neyrinck
the short duration was not just a practical constraint of the commission, but an
artistic challenge: he expressed this repeatedly in the two interviews. Thus one
would expect a search to fully realise it while composing.

Cross-border experimentation
The explanation of the low level of experimentation could also be that Neyrinck
relied on previously developed procedures that were either personally devel-
oped or externally available. The former seems more plausible than the latter,
not only because in the interviews Neyrinck declares that he developed some
of these techniques in previous works but also because existing handbooks
on composition offer some procedures to compose, but not really a personal
blend like the one that Neyrinck has developed.
But I believe that the view of the minimum of experimentation and on the
experimentation itself in the creative process of Neyrinck is distorted by the
design and framework of this study. As mentioned before, it is important to
realise that the CPMC is a dynamic process in which both the ideas of the
composer and the realisations change frequently. Initially ill-defined prob-
lems may be restructured radically or vague plans may become more focused.
Within a dynamic process it is difficult to draw conclusions starting from one
“frozen” instance. Studying one instance of experimentation separately may
lead to absurd observations: the challenge is to find a meaningful grouping of
experiments, a cycle of experiments. The cognitive/emotional processes that
together with the actions give shape to the phenomenon of experimentation

7 This is true for the creative process of six of the eight composers studied. Except for Neyrinck there was
one other composer whose creative process can be considered as linear, but this composer clearly stated
that the short work he produced should be seen as a study, sketch, or unfinished composition and not
as a finished work. He added that this study was made within a research project on polyphony and was
different from his previous compositions.

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change in time, thus it is also important to reflect upon the referential time
one uses when linking an experimental action to a cognitive/emotional pro-
cess. For example, a sketch of a composer reveals that he suddenly starts using
an interior piano technique. Does this mean that this was a new element for the
composer compared to what the composer was thinking or aspiring to at the
start of this experiment, or at the start of a cycle of experiments, or at the start
of the creative process of this particular composition? These considerations
lead me to think that in the case of Neyrinck, with so little experimentation
during the composition of this one work, I was missing the point. Where is the
meaningful group of experiments in his case? This question forced me to look
at the limitations of this study and in particular to move beyond the boundaries
of studying the genesis of only one composition.
Neyrinck composed quite a lot in 2011, thirteen works according to his own
list. A closer look at the titles of these works reveals something peculiar: many
of them are part of a cycle of compositions. In 2011 eleven of thirteen com-
positions are part of series, with names such as Samsa, Gestalt, Aphorismes, and
Mischung, and a number of works entitled Echo, which the composer describes
as “derivatives” of other compositions (for example Echo der Gestalt II). Could
it be that in Neyrinck’s case experimentations within the framework of a series
of compositions should be studied? And that for example in certain works,
or in between works of a series, the composer experiments more than during
the composition of another work and then applies possible results in the next
composition of this series? Studying the creative process of one work within a
cycle of works might deliver only limited insight, comparable to studying only
one week of creative activity of a composer who works for two months on a
new composition. Donin (2012) has drawn attention to a peculiar phenomenon
with regard to this compositional strategy of “cycle development”: “a cycle is
often the result of compositional ideas stemming from a first piece that compel
further elaboration.” He adds: “These are then included in the composer’s atel-
ier as they are applied, over the course of the cycle, to successive pieces through
replication, variation and designation, or even theorisation.” This implies that
there can be big differences, from pure replications to new explorations, within
the creative processes of the pieces within one cycle of compositions.
At this point Neyrinck was asked two questions via email: “What does a
cycle of works mean to you?” and “Could you make this answer concrete by
giving some explanation about the following two cycli: Samsa and Aphorismes?”
Neyrinck answers that he likes to work with cycles or series of works because he
finds it interesting to let a musical starting point clash with a specific instru-
mentation. He gives a short explanation of the musical starting points of the
series Mischung, Processus, and Gestalt and continues with the Aphorismes series,
of which the short work in this study is a part: “This is a study on ‘how do I write
or how do I want to write for a piano?’ And because I didn’t see possibilities
in writing a large work, I opted for the Aphorismes, in which different possibil-
ities of resonances and layers of resonances are researched.” It is remarkable
that he mentions the terms “study” and “researched” in this email, because he
had used only a few instances of similar terms in the interviews (as mentioned

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 Hans Roels

above) and in one of these cases he was talking precisely about the same res-
onances. This confirms that the meaningful cycle of experiments transcends
this one short composition. However, to study this in detail, one would need
to have sketches and in-time accounts of Neyrinck’s creative process while he
was composing his previous works, especially the other parts of the Aphorismes
cycle. Unfortunately these data are not available.
To conclude, in the creative process of Aphorisme IX very little experimenta-
tion has been found, but just as this work is hard to describe as an “autonomous”
composition its creative process is also not a separate entity. Both belong to a
cycle, a larger and longer-lasting unit. Studying this creative process without
connecting it to the creative process of the rest of the Aphorismes cycle is quite
meaningless. We end up looking at seemingly separate, loose experiments
without being able to describe the connection to the chain of experimentation
that shaped the whole cycle (according to the composer). Deliège and Richelle
(2006) have already written very briefly on this problem of timing in the study
of the CPMC. In the introduction to the book Musical Creativity, they write:
“One major methodological difficulty in the study of creative acts is the time
dimension. Supposing adequate tools are available, when exactly shall we apply
them? In other words, at what point in time does the sonnet begin in the poet’s
mind, or the symphony in the composer’s brain? And how does the process
develop in time? Is it continuous or discontinuous?” This study was based on
a common design in naturalistic studies of the CPMC, namely following the
creative process of one composition between the decision to start composing
and the first performance, but it turned out that Aphorisme IX had a prehistory,
a creative phase that took place before the composer decided to write this work
and before he started composing this work in a fixed time-span of a few weeks.
To find a meaningful entity within the broad category of creative acts of a com-
poser, the notion of experimentation provided an important clue. Compared
to general creative acts, which are often loose and accidental, experiments can
contain development or form a meaningful whole, but they do not always lead
linearly to an artistic product. In this way experimentation hovers in between
general creative acts and the creative process of a composition. For the study
of the genesis of compositions it is a future challenge to find a method that
treats the start and end of the creative process as transparent boundaries and
that is aware of how intertwined loose creative acts, cycles of experimentation,
and the creative process may be.8 Finding such a method would enable us to
provide a more profound description and explanation of the minimal amount
of experimentation in cases such as the composition of Aphorisme IX.

8 To this a more speculative thought may be added: maybe the entanglement of loose creative acts, cycles
of experimentation, and the creative process is not the only challenge. The process and product (the
composition) of “cycle” composers such as Neyrinck may also be more interwoven. Some Aphorismes
may not only function as a work within a cycle but also as a preparatory “sketch” or “draft” or “experi-
ment” for the next Aphorisme.

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 Cycles of Experimentation and the Creative Process of Music Composition

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237
 Changing Sounds,
Changing Meanings:
How Artistic Experimentation
Opens Up the Field of
Brahms Performance Practice

Anna Scott
Leiden University; Orpheus Research Centre in Music

As the tenets of the historically-informed performance (HIP) movement push

ever farther into later repertoires, they have encountered those composers
and musicians for whom we have sounding historical traces. Twenty years
ago, Robert Philip (1992, 228) predicted that when modern reconstructions
of “authentic” Elgar performances met Elgar as he was recorded, there would
be “a collision between two worlds, a real world which no longer exists, and
a reconstructed world which never wholly existed except in the imagination.”
Those of us who may have smugly anticipated this cataclysm in the late piano
music of Johannes Brahms have since witnessed a strange stalemate: despite a
deep-seated belief in the historical validity of their performances, pianists are
still reluctant to play in ways that come anywhere near those evidenced by the
recordings of the Brahms circle of pianists.
On the surface, this gap seems to persist because mainstream pianists con-
tinue to believe in an unbroken performance tradition stretching back to
Brahms’s day, viewing the late-Romantic stylistic devices evidenced by early
recordings as remnants of that epoch’s yet unbridled sentimentalism and
shoddy technique. Period pianists prefer to rely on malleable documentary
sources such as treatises, ignoring what early recordings might teach us about
the rational limits of historical recreationist practices in favour of non-sound-
ing traces. Even “off the record” performers tend to selectively apply only those
elements of recorded Brahms style that “do not challenge current notions of
good taste or that do not take us out of our comfort zone” (Peres Da Costa
2012, 310).
In an attempt to acknowledge these gaps without exploring the deeper rea-
sons behind them, many scholars assert that historicist performance ventures
are generally desirable because they make us “sit up and listen” (ibid., xxv) or,

239
 Anna Scott

as Bernard D. Sherman (2009) observes: “HIP Brahms is thriving more than

I expected, because it continues to rekindle musicians’ passion for Brahms.”
But perhaps HIP Brahms is popular because it is nothing like the period record-
ings: it fulfils some ethical duty to the composer and satisfies our appetite for
hearing old music with new ears, without destabilising ideas about how Brahms
“should” sound and signify in performance.
Our practical application of historical knowledge is indeed “informed”—not
by all we know about how Brahms performed, but by a pervasive set of style
rules that mediate how Brahms’s canonic identity should be communicated in
performance. Philip’s prophesied collision of knowledge, ethics, and act has
been sidestepped because any effort to bestow real historical authority on the
playing styles encapsulated by the Brahms circle recordings would expose the
historical invalidity of the very ideas that mediate our translation of historical
evidence into “authentic” musical acts. According to our style rules, Brahms
performances should be classically controlled and serious; however, the
recordings of Brahms and his students are extroverted, agitated, and decidedly
Romantic. Traditional approaches to this type of evidence are thus highly selec-
tive because according to our understanding of “authentic” Brahms style, the
Brahms circle of pianists themselves would today be deemed historically-unin-
formed Brahms performers.
I therefore propose an open-ended approach, whereby recorded Brahms
style at its most extreme is applied and encouraged to unravel these restrictive
ideas. Far from advocating more historically-informed Brahms performances
across the board, I hope to demonstrate how experimenting with everything
we know about Brahms’s playing style tends to produce rather undesirable
Brahmsian sounds and meanings. It is my belief that only these most “danger-
ous” sounds have the power to bring about Philip’s war of worlds, leading to
either a complete disavowal of our belief in the historical accuracy of modern
HIP Brahms, or a fundamental retelling of Brahms’s canonic identity and how
it might be communicated in performance. In either case, perhaps pianists may
finally begin to produce sounds that, for better or worse, actually make audi-
ences sit up and listen.
Before pianists can be convinced to experiment with the elements of
recorded Brahms style, they must first abandon the view that long-extinct
unnotated expressive devices such as dislocation, arpeggiation, and tempo
modification were merely a “meretricious sugar coating” with few implica-
tions for how late-Romantic works were understood and experienced in per-
formance (Crutchfield 1986, 18). While tastes and performance standards have
indeed changed in the intervening century, it is no coincidence that the use of
such devices became undesirable around the time a pianist’s role transitioned
from providing an ephemeral and idiosyncratic performance experience, to
one of becoming a disappearing transmitter of canonic works and identities.
Artists born before 1880, like Alfred Cortot, for example, were celebrated for
their detailed attention to the harmonic and melodic minutiae of the works
they performed. Theirs “was an emotional-pictorial approach to understanding
and communicating musical meaning” (Leech-Wilkinson 2009, 252), whereby

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unnotated expressive devices were used in highly conscientious and complex

ways to set melodic material in dynamic and temporal relief, to underline par-
ticularly poignant harmonies or melodic twists, or to impart varied rhythmic
interest to particular passages as they saw fit. By World War II, however, artists
who had always possessed a more literal and restrained personal approach, like
Artur Schnabel, for example, suddenly became famous for their “new, almost
mechanical direction towards something perceived to be more faithful to the
score” (ibid.). The training of pianists thus became focused on the eradication
not only of technical failings but also of the more wilfully eccentric elements of
their performance styles.
Once emotional and physical control became symbolic of a performer’s
devotion to canonic works and personalities, pianists needed to know what it
was about a particular composer that warranted faithfulness in the first place.
Indeed, what people think about composers has a lot to do with how they play
their works. Daniel Leech-Wilkinson (2009, 246) has shown how the Schubert
recordings of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau “shaped the things people thought and
wrote about the composer, bringing to him a new seriousness and psychological
depth that was not there . . . for earlier listeners.” Similarly, Kornel Michalowski
and Jim Samson (2012) have argued that one can hear the differences between
various late-nineteenth-century nationalistic perceptions of Chopin (from
French, German, Russian, and English perspectives) in the early recordings of
representative pianists from each country.
Equally, modern pianists are the inheritors of powerful ideas about who
Brahms was, leading us to shape our performances in ways that probably would
never have occurred to pianists born before 1880. As heir to the Baroque and
Classical masters who preceded him, Brahms’s classic status is to be commu-
nicated by clear, symmetrical, controlled, and structurally-elucidative perfor-
mances. Morally and intellectually opposed to the total artwork composers and
flashy virtuosos of Wagner and Liszt’s New German School, Brahmsian perfor-
mances are those that are rational, learned, stoic, and absolute. Finally, as the
“last” serious composer of Classical music, Brahms is defined in performance
by what he is not: virtuosic, wild, sentimental, weak, feminine, casual, irrational,
extroverted, and superficial.
We believe that these ideas lead to historically valid performances because
they are found through nineteenth-century dissections of the composer and
his output, having arisen out of contemporaneous debates over the future of
German art music and the nature of Brahms’s legacy. While Eduard Hanslick
proclaimed that “this strongly ethical character of Beethoven’s music, which is
serious even in merriment . . . is also decidedly evident in Brahms” (quoted in
Musgrave 2000, 225–26), the New Germans “insinuated that he was play-acting
as Beethoven’s successor to the point of duplicating the Titan’s devious ways,
[like] frequenting little out-of-the-way restaurants” (Stojowski 1933, 150). And
when supporters stated that “in Brahms’s music the intellectual element often
predominates . . . he buil[ds] with the most laborious precision, as if acknowl-
edging even in his creative work the validity of the biblical admonition: ‘In
the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread’” (Adler 1933, 125), critics accused

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 Anna Scott

Brahms of being devoted to a dead art in the absence of true inspiration. By the
end of the century the stakes couldn’t have been higher. As The Musical Times
and Singing-Class Circular (1888, 10) opined, “At a time when men who ought to
know better are trying to destroy form without being able to put anything in its
place, [Brahms] stands fast by the good old way—the way of masters who were
giants, the way worn by the feet of generations.”
Deeply embedded in the historical record, these notions continue to be
used to assign value to modern pianists’ Brahms performances. Pianists exhib-
iting control of their psychophysical state are awarded the highest praise,
like Claudio Arrau’s “technical control which comes, not from the fingers,
but from the pianist’s whole body and spirit, massively poised” (Gramophone
1983). Unfortunately, themes related to Brahmsian corporeality continue to be
under-explored as his canonic identity seems to have been expressly designed
to transcend such concerns—perhaps to distance him from the tragic mind-
body disintegration (and overt Romanticism) of his mentor, Robert Schumann.
This theme of “characteristic” Brahmsian control also continues to medi-
ate recent attempts to reconcile the historical documentary and sounding
evidence. In Performing Brahms: Early Evidence of Performance Style, Michael
Musgrave (2003, 307) compares verbal descriptions of the composer’s play-
ing style to his 1889 cylinder recording of the Hungarian Dance in G Minor,
concluding that Brahms’s playing was characterised by “a strong sense of the
basic musical structure, with strong beginnings and ends of passages, yet an
awareness of the distinctive ideas or digressions within them, though not to
the detriment of the overall shape; varieties of touch and tone, according to
the character of the piece, whether strongly marked or veiled, but always warm,
rounded and distinctive; and a strongly rhythmic character where appropriate.”
Unfortunately, this summary could describe any controlled modern Brahms
performance, while the composer’s recording evidences a wild, bombastic,
and almost cavalier approach that sounds thoroughly foreign to modern ears.1
Though Musgrave acknowledges moments where Brahms improvises, where
he straightens out dotted figurations, and where he rushes, these elements do
not explicitly find their way into the author’s final summation of the essential
qualities of Brahms’s playing style. Musgrave (ibid., 305) even acknowledges the
presence of some palpable feeling of spontaneous abandon in the composer’s
playing, but only to dismiss it as “a hasty if enthusiastic response to the record-
ing medium.” Alas even Brahms can get a bit carried away from time to time.
Michael Musgrave adopts a similar approach when comparing Brahms’s stu-
dent Adelina De Lara’s recordings of the Intermezzo op. 117 no. 1 in E♭ Major
and the Rhapsody op. 79 no. 2 in G Minor with verbal descriptions of the com-
poser’s playing—many of which come from De Lara herself.2 While little atten-
tion is paid to her frequent dislocations, arpeggiations, and asymmetrical local
rhythmic alterations in op. 117 no. 1, or her precipitous rushing over the quickly

1 To listen to Brahms’s recording and for detailed information on its analysis and transcription see Berger
(2012).
2 Both De Lara’s recordings can be heard on De Lara, Eibenschütz, and Davies (1991).

242
 Changing Sounds, Changing Meanings

alternating chordal passages of op. 79 no. 2, Musgrave (ibid., 315) praises her
controlled approach to tempo and dynamics, her faithfulness to the score, her
structurally-elucidative playing, and her straightforward approach. He asserts
that, “altogether her performance reflects her recollections of Brahms’s per-
formance and can thus be taken as having real authority, despite her obvious
limitations of technique and occasionally of memory of reading.” Again, De
Lara’s historical authority is confirmed only by those elements that support
familiar ideas of how Brahms should sound and signify, while the more foreign
elements of her style are a result of some weakness of mind (memory) and body
(technique).
Aside from the obvious problems associated with judging the historical
authority of past musicians’ actual performances against agenda-laden, incom-
plete, and context-dependent verbal reports, many descriptions of Brahms
at the piano actually support my suspicion that these musicians possessed a
thoroughly “other” approach to performance: one evidenced by the early
recordings, yet suppressed in modern analyses. Brahms’s students described
his style as “elastic and expansive” and “rugged, and almost sketchy” (Davies
1929, 1:182), and remembered that “he played as if he were just improvising,
with heart and soul . . . forgetting everything around him” (Derenburg 1926,
599). Brahms biographer Richard Specht noted that “there was in [his] playing
a singing and surging, a flitting of lights and a scurrying of shadows, a glow-
ing and a dying away, self-possessed manly emotion and self-forgetful roman-
tic passion” (quoted in Pascall and Weller 2003, 232), while Clara Schumann’s
daughter Eugenie recalled that “[she] never gained the impression that Brahms
looked upon the piano as a beloved friend, as did [her] mother. He seemed to
be in battle with it . . . it was as though a tempest were tossing clouds” (quoted
in Musgrave 2000, 127). Indeed, the precipitous, improvisatory, and thoroughly
Romantic recorded playing styles of the Brahms circle of pianists seem to
have much more in common with descriptions such as these, rather than with
Musgrave’s own assessments and the style rules that inform them.
In Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing, even pianist
Neal Peres Da Costa’s own experiments with recorded Brahms style are a
demonstration of the extent to which the parameter of control continues to
distance modern “authentic” Brahms from Brahms as he was recorded. While
Da Costa rushes during crescendi and other dramatic moments (though not to
the same extent or frequency as De Lara), he re-establishes his original tempo
afterwards whereas De Lara allowed her local rushing to accumulate over
entire sections. This practice tended to unravel the temporal fabric of a musical
work: it revealed asymmetrical phrases, uneven note values, blurred structural
boundaries, a muddling of Brahms’s complex contrapuntal and rhythmic mate-
rial, and an increased prevalence of missed notes, improvisation, and trunca-
tion of material. By regulating and controlling the destabilising potentialities
of De Lara’s local tempo modifications, Da Costa’s performances simply do not
leave the same impression as Brahms’s style as it was recorded and described.
In a joint lecture-performance given with Darla Crispin at the 2012 ORCiM
Research Festival, I demonstrated how elements of Adelina De Lara’s recorded

243
 Anna Scott

style could be applied to highlight the corporeal and psychological conun-

drums that lie at the heart of Brahms’s Intermezzo op. 116 no. 5 in E Minor. In
the opening eight bars of op. 117 no. 1 (figure 1), De Lara emphasises the outer
boundaries of local phrases with longer note values, dislocation, and arpeggia-
tion. By slightly rushing over the inner material of each phrase without re-es-
tablishing her original tempo each time, her speed slightly accumulates, creat-
ing one over-arching eight-bar phrase idea. This local emphasis and large-scale
tempo modification leads to a performance that seems slightly asymmetrical,
rushed, offhand and stilted—especially as compared with the literal readings,
consistent tempi, even note values, and controlled symmetrical phrasing char-
acteristic of modern interpretations of this work.

Fig. 1

While many performers are intuitively aware of some ambiguous emotion-

al-pictorial content in Brahms’s sphinx-like Intermezzo op. 116 no. 5 in E
Minor, they try to communicate this understanding only through subtle manip-
ulations of tone colour and attack, while maintaining consistent tempi and try-
ing to cleanly negotiate Brahms’s awkward arrangement of the notes of each
upbeat chord (figure 2). Here, the thumbs of each hand must be crossed and
uncrossed at each iteration—a negotiation rife with the potential for lapses of
timing, memory, and coordination, as well as for missed or partially sounding
notes.
There is evidence to suggest, however, that physical and psychological dis-
comfort may lie at the heart of what this work “tells of.” In a letter to Clara
Schumann describing his ossia version, where the notes played by each thumb
are exchanged, Brahms (1892, 698) writes: “In the little E minor piece, it’s prob-
ably better if you always take the 6th eighth as indicated on the first beat, in
parentheses. Of course, the peculiar appeal which is always connected with a

244

Figure 1. Johannes Brahms, Intermezzo op. 117 no. 1 in E♭ Major, mm. 1–8. Reprinted from Jo-
hannes Brahms: Sämtliche Werke, vol. 14 (Leipzig: Brietkopf and Härtel [1926–27], reproduced by
IMSLP: Petrucci Music Library, http://imslp.org/wiki/Special:ReverseLookup/84694).
 Changing Sounds, Changing Meanings

Fig. 2

difficulty is then lost.” Brahms surely knew that Clara would have understood
that this “peculiar appeal” lay not just in the bodily implications of a pianist’s
crossed thumbs, but also in how a performer’s sense of fallibility translates into
aesthetic experience. Brahms had a special awareness of the body, and espe-
cially his thumbs: his pupil Eugenie Schumann (1927, 141) once reported that
he “gave special attention to the training of the thumb, which . . . was given
a very prominent part in his own playing,” while another in his circle, the
composer Ethel Smyth (1919, 1:266), recalled how Brahms “when lifting a sub-
merged theme out of a tangle of music [would] jokingly . . . ask us to admire the
gentle sonority of his ‘tenor thumb.’”
If the metaphysical implications of this tricky negotiation of a pianist’s
thumbs is key to communicating the emotional-pictorial content of op. 116 no.
5, it follows that a provocative performance would be one in which a perform-
er’s unsound state of body and mind is highlighted rather than controlled. A
good place to start might be to mimic Adelina De Lara’s local emphasis of the
outer boundaries of phrases, her slight rushing over internal phrase material,
and her tendency to allow local rhythmic alterations to unfurl into large-scale
tempo modifications. In op. 116 no. 5, I propose that the pianist underlines the
crossing of her or his thumbs by applying longer note values and increased note
intensities when they converge, and by rushing and playing less to the bottoms
of the keys when they are pulled apart. If we examine the opening measures of
op. 116 no. 5, we notice that these points of emphasis coincide with the outer

245

Figure 2: Johannes Brahms, Intermezzo op. 116 no. 5 in E Minor, mm. 1–12. Reprint-
ed from Johannes Brahms: Sämtliche Werke, vol. 14 (Leipzig: Brietkopf and Härtel
[1926–27], reproduced by IMSLP: Petrucci Music Library, http://imslp.org/wiki/
Special:ReverseLookup/84692).
 Anna Scott

edges of couplets grouped in pairs. If the pianist then allows each instance of
local rushing to accumulate, she or he is forced to accomplish the more wide-
ly-spaced thumb crossings in the middle of the section at a significantly quicker
pace—resulting in a palpable sense of risk.
By abandoning our preoccupation with control, performances of this work
suddenly take on an improvisatory, sketchy, and ephemeral quality that seems
to reflect evidence of Brahms’s own playing style, in its entirety. Most impor-
tantly, when performances are allowed to unfold in multifarious planes of time,
texture, and corporeality, pianists gain access to potentialities of sound and
meaning they might have intuitively sensed, yet that have lain just beyond their
reach under the edicts and norms of modern “authentic” Brahms performance.
Contrary to popular opinion, performance approaches that reflect all we know
about the playing style of the Brahms circle of pianists tend to produce sounds
and meanings that are still largely undesirable. But how much longer can we
justify our efforts to protect HIP Brahms from Brahms himself ? Until pianists
experience recorded Brahms style, not through the nostalgic crackle of early
recordings, but in and through modern bodies and minds, this is a question no
one is really informed enough to ask, much less answer.

References
Adler, Guido. 1933. “Johannes Brahms: His De Lara, Adelina, Ilona Eibenschütz, and
Achievement, His Personality, and His Fanny Davies (pianists). 1991. Pupils of
Position.” Translated by W. Oliver Strunk. Clara Schumann. Pearl, GEMM CDS
Musical Quarterly 19 (2): 113–42. 99049, 6 compact discs. Recorded
Berger, Jonathan. 2012. “Brahms at the 1928–52.
Piano; Sonic Archeology: An Analysis Derenburg, Mrs. Carl [Ilona Eibenschütz].
and Transcription of the 1889 Cylinder 1926. “My Recollections of Brahms.”
Recording of Johannes Brahms’ Musical Times 67 (1001): 598–600.
Performance of a Segment of His First Gramophone. 1983. Review of Brahms Piano
Hungarian Dance.” The Historical Works, by Claudio Arrau, Philips (1) 6768
Recordings Project, Center for Computer 356. July 1983. Accessed July 15, 2012.
Research in Music and Acoustics, http://www.gramophone.co.uk.
Stanford University. Accessed 27 Leech-Wilkinson, Daniel. 2009. “Recordings
November. https://ccrma.stanford.edu/ and Histories of Performance Style.”
groups/edison/brahms/brahms.html. In The Cambridge Companion to Recorded
Brahms, Johannes. 1892. “Letter 515: Music, edited by Nicholas Cook, Eric
Johannes Brahms to Clara Schumann.” In Clarke, Daniel Leech-Wilkinson,
Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters, selected and John Rink, 246–62. Cambridge:
and annotated by Styra Avins, translated Cambridge University Press.
by Josef Eisinger and Styra Avina, 1997, Michalowski, Kornel, and Jim Samson.
697–98. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2012. “Chopin, Fryderyk Franciszek, 11:
Crutchfield, Will. 1986. “Brahms, by Those Reception.” In Grove Music Online. Oxford
Who Knew Him.” Opus 2 (5): 12–21, 60. Music Online. Oxford University Press.
Davies, Fanny. 1929. “Some Personal Accessed 27 November. http://www.
Recollections of Brahms as Pianist oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/
and Interpreter.” In Cobbett’s Cyclopedic article/grove/music/51099.
Survey of Chamber Music, 2nd ed., edited Musgrave, Michael. 2000. A Brahms Reader.
by Walter Willson Cobbett and Colin New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Mason, 1963, 3 vols., 1:182–84. London: ———. 2003. “Early Trends in the
Oxford University Press. Performance of Brahms’s Piano Music.”

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In Performing Brahms: Early Evidence of Philip, Robert. 1992. Early Recordings

Performance Style, edited by Michael and Musical Style: Changing Tastes in
Musgrave and Bernard D. Sherman, 302– Instrumental Performance, 1900–1950.
26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Press. Schumann, Eugenie. 1927. Memoirs of Eugenie
Musical Times and Singing-Class Circular. 1888. Schumann. Translated by Marie Busch.
Unsigned review of Johannes Brahms: A London: William Heinemann.
Biographical Sketch, by Hermann Deiters, Sherman, Bernard D. 2009. “Orchestral
translated by Rosa Newmarch, edited by Brahms and ‘Historically Informed
J. A. Fuller-Maitland. 29 (539): 9–11. Performance’: A Progress Report.”
Pascall, Robert, and Philip Weller. 2003. bsherman.net. Accessed 2 November
“Flexible Tempo and Nuancing in 2012. http://bsherman.net/Brahms_
Orchestral Music: Understanding Diapason_Sherman_English.htm.
Brahms’s View of Interpretation in His Smyth, Ethel. 1919. Impressions that Remained:
Second Piano Concerto and Fourth Memoirs. 2 vols. London: Longmans,
Symphony.” In Performing Brahms: Early Green.
Evidence of Performance Style, edited Stojowski, Sigismond. 1933. “Recollections
by Michael Musgrave and Bernard of Brahms.” Musical Quarterly 19 (2):
D. Sherman, 220–43. Cambridge: 143–50.
Cambridge University Press.
Peres Da Costa, Neal. 2012. Off the Record:
Performing Practices in Romantic Piano
Playing. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2012.

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 Experiments in Time:
Music-Research with Jazz Standards
in the Professional Context

Steve Tromans
Middlesex University

To render time sensible in itself is a task common to the painter, the musician, and
sometimes the writer.
—Gilles Deleuze ([2003] 2005, 45)

The greatest thing I can do to pay respect to a jazz musician of the past is to be a jazz
musician of the present.
—James Falzone (2011), clarinettist and composer1

I graduated from music college in the late 1990s and have been a working jazz
musician (pianist and composer) ever since, performing in a variety of venues,
for varying audience sizes, and in many different performance setups. In addi-
tion to performing my own compositions and making music in freely-impro-
vised concerts, I often play, and am familiar with, a number of jazz standards.
Alongside my work as a musician, for the last few years I have also been
involved in practice-as-research at doctoral level. This type of research activity
has enabled me to bring together the contexts of the professional and the doc-
toral, with interesting implications for both. In a series of practice-as-research
projects undertaken in performances that have arisen in the course of my work
in music, I have used jazz standards in a deliberately experimental manner;
this has been part of my on-going enquiry into the complex temporalities in
operation in the experience of music-making in events of performance. In this
document, I elucidate certain aspects of these music-research experiments,
from the perspective of one of the musicians involved (myself, analysing post-
event); specifically, I investigate a recording session in 2011 that provided my

1 The quotation by James Falzone is from the liner notes to his 2011 album Other Doors. This recent album
documented a fascinating project involving his quartet Klang, in performances with music associated
with the famous 20th-century clarinettist and composer Benny Goodman. For more on the various
music-making projects of James Falzone and Klang, see http://www.allosmusica.org.

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 Steve Tromans

first opportunity to work in a duo with the jazz drummer and composer
JJ Wheeler.2

d uo per F o rMan c e oF “J u st F rien d s ”

On 14 June 2011, Wheeler and I recorded a series of jazz standards in the Recital
Hall of Birmingham Conservatoire. The recording was made in “live” condi-
tions—we performed as if playing for an audience, without stopping to begin
takes again, to overdub parts, or for any of the performance practices typically
available to, and used by, musicians working in a studio setting. However, given
that there was no audience in attendance (even the sound engineer was absent
once the record button had been pressed), the typical processes of judging
audience reaction—in the moment and after each performance of a given
piece—were not enabled. Accordingly, the music-making with the jazz stand-
ards we selected was somewhat liberated from any temptations to adhere to
more standardised performing practices. Added to this relative freedom of
expression was the desire to experiment with what could be achieved by our
combined forces, and through that to develop, and potentially renew, our artis-
tic identities as jazz musicians, thus furthering our expertise in music-making.
This attitude is certainly in line with ORCiM’s recent definition of artistic
experimentation, which states that “artistic experimentation encompasses the
actions that an artist undertakes in developing and constantly renewing per-
sonal artistic identity and expertise” (Orpheus Research Centre in Music 2010).
To my mind, the performance of Klenner and Lewis’s 1931 “Just Friends”
was exemplary with regard to the artistic experimentation undertaken by the
duo. At this point, it is important to listen to the audio excerpt of the opening
moments of the performance, since it grounds the analytical and theoretical
writing that follows.3
The following analysis of the music excerpt just mentioned is written from
the perspective of one of the players involved, albeit framed retrospectively
according to my research concerns. By this, I mean that the analysis benefits
from two different, though related, points of view: the first, written in a reflec-
tive register, remembers the music-making processes involved; the second, a
research-specific register, selects which of these processes are pertinent to the
experiment in question.
In the performance, at the point at which I began articulating the melodic
line of the last eight bars of the written melody and the full ‘head’ that fol-
lowed (from 0’33” in the excerpt), I looped fragments of that melodic line for
varying lengths of time, breaking the typical flow of the melody into a series
of short, rhythmical ostinati. I harmonised my right-hand reworking of the
piece’s melodic line with similar figures in my left hand, which were some-

2 Full information on JJ Wheeler’s music activities and career to date can be found at http://www.jjwheel-
er.co.uk.
3 CD, track 2, features the full-length performance of “Just Friends” (leading into Monk and Best’s 1952
“Bemsha Swing”); it also features on the album Blue Room, released on Mongrel Records in late 2011. See
http://www.mongrelrecords.wordpress.com.

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 Experiments in Time

times synchronised with my right and at other times as part of a canonic “call
and response” between the two hands. My left-hand harmony notes did not
necessarily always match the typical root-movement of “Just Friends,” and
deviated from the well-known, almost textbook, II–V chord progressions that
make the piece such a popular learning vehicle for students. Harmonising the
melodic line differently to the typical way in which the piece is played, as well
as fragmenting the melodic line into a series of looped ostinati, helped move
the music-making away from the over standardised, while still grounding it in
relation to jazz practice with “Just Friends” and the standard repertoire more
generally. For instance, with regard to that disciplinary grounding, my right
hand only used the given melody notes in its ostinati, and I gradually worked
through the head on a bar-by-bar basis—albeit with the regular four-beats-to-
a-bar elongated or reduced by asymmetrical ostinati lengths and varying num-
bers of repeats of those ostinati.
In these opening moments, I set up a basic 1/4 crotchet pulse in relation to
Wheeler’s drumming, and worked to avoid stressing a regular 3/4 or 4/4 divi-
sion of that pulse. Although there were periods where a 4/4 pulse was used, it is
important to note that these instances of relative temporal stability arose in the
course of the music-making and were not pre-planned to occur at set points in
the performance.
On listening back to the opening minutes of the audio recording, I perceive
that Wheeler began pursuing a similarly repetitive approach in response to
my rhythmical ostinati. With hindsight, I am suggesting that it was this simi-
lar reaction that helped cement the separate instrumental contributions into
a cohesive duo statement during the opening moments of the music-mak-
ing. Approaching the end of the introduction (0’28” on the excerpt), Wheeler
restricted his playing to the most basic drumkit elements (hi-hat, snare drum,
and bass drum); I interpret his playing as mimicking the simplicity of my piano
articulations, “locking into” my implied 1/4 general pulse, and working through
his own variations of rhythmical loops (two, three, and four crotchets in length,
in no fixed pattern). In my analysis of this aspect of the duo’s practice, I classify
the interplay between the piano and the drums as being both synchronised and
independently-oriented. It was synchronised by virtue of the crotchet pulse we
set up early in the performance and subsequently maintained. Yet, in contrast
to the relational connection provided by the common grounding in a crotchet
pulse, our individual playing was oriented towards partial independence: we
each chose to articulate the rhythmical loops in asymmetrical fashion, but in
different configurations.
It seems likely to me that listeners who are familiar with the typical per-
forming practice of “Just Friends” will be struck by the novelty of the duo’s
music-making, irrespective of the aesthetic decisions that inevitably follow; in
other words, they will make judgments as to whether they liked it, or thought
the experiment worked, based on musical criteria. The principal reason for
experimenting with the articulation of this standard was related to my on-go-
ing research into the operation of complex temporal processes in events of
music-making, as I indicated above. However, given that the boundary between

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 Steve Tromans

what constitutes the workings of a musician and the workings of a musician-re-

searcher are somewhat blurred (necessarily, in my view), in this paper I will also
explore the implications of the duo’s music-making in terms of the wider field
of jazz practice.

a F F ec ti ve poten tial an d JaZZ stan dard s in tWen ty - First -

c entur y J aZZ prac tic e

The music-making with jazz standards that Wheeler and I undertook was cer-
tainly not of a nostalgic kind. There was no attempt to recreate twentieth-cen-
tury jazz practices, or to mimic the ways in which various jazz artists have per-
formed “Just Friends” over the 80-odd years of its existence—and why should
there be? After all, time has moved on, and the conditions of emergence per-
tinent to past music-making in jazz have changed. Since the 1930s there have
been numerous movements in jazz practice—for example, free jazz and jazz-
rock in the 1960s and 1970s (and beyond). I believe that even if a contemporary
jazz musician doesn’t explicitly reflect the artists and music-making practices
associated with prior artistic movements in jazz in their own playing, their
historical position nonetheless implicates past practices in the emergence of
twenty-first-century jazz.
The philosopher Brian Massumi (2002, 24) has argued that “it may be noted
that the primacy of the affective is marked by a gap between content and effect: it
would appear that the strength or duration of an image’s effect is not logically
connected to the content in any straightforward way.” In Massumi’s terms, “the
strength or duration of the image’s effect could be called its intensity” (ibid.); he
argued that “intensity would seem to be associated with nonlinear processes:
resonation and feedback that momentarily suspend the linear progress of
the narrative present from past to future” (ibid., 26). Although Massumi was
concerned with the affective capacity, intensity, and non-linear resonance of
images, I consider it reasonable to extend his notion of an affective dimen-
sion of the visual to the other senses: it is hardly controversial to suggest that
music-making in jazz has the potential to affect and to elicit intense emotional
responses in listeners.
Affective response is unpredictable by nature (hence my use of the quali-
fier “potential”): whether affective potential is actualised in an event of per-
formance cannot be predicted a priori. However, through purposefully playing
with certain more standardised aspects of jazz-standard practice, I suggest that
conditions were enabled in which listeners’ engagements with the music-mak-
ing could be affected—at least temporarily. To what end is the subject of the
section that follows.

J a ZZ s ta nda r d s an d tacit Ju d g Men ts

Jazz standards tend to be regarded in canonical terms by players, critics,

researchers, and audience members alike. It is easy to name a jazz standard,
and to (relatively) immediately recognise that a musician or band is playing

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 Experiments in Time

one, especially if that musician or band is playing the standard in a fairly typ-
ical way. In general, there are certain phrases, chord changes, and structural
devices, among other performing conventions, that are guaranteed to trigger a
recognition response from those familiar with the main body of jazz standards.
There is also a similarly conventional set of performance practices that a knowl-
edgeable jazz fan (or musician) would be able to associate with one or other (or
several) of the famous movements in jazz history.
That process of judgment—in which a performance is determined to be of
an identifiable jazz standard, and/or in a manner associated with the typical
practices of a particular jazz movement—is tacitly undertaken by the experi-
enced jazz enthusiast. For instance, if bebop is no longer a shock to the senses,
as it may have been on first encounter (as admittedly it was for me, in my teen-
age years), then a judgment of a given performance as being in a bebop style
will tend to be made rapidly. Furthermore, that initial judgment will proceed
to ground what follows in bebop terms, although modulated in accordance
with that particular person’s experiences with bebop. On being exposed to
music-making, whether live or recorded, it would seem difficult for a person
not to immediately begin judging that music-making according to criteria of
both a personal and music-disciplinary nature.
However, being tacitly undertaken, during the majority of its enactment in
everyday life and in experiences of more standardised (or immediately recog-
nisable) music-making, such judgmental processes can elude easy identifica-
tion in research. By working to enable the actualisation of affective potential in
listeners’ engagement with deliberately non-standardised music-making with
jazz standards, I was intent on making explicit those judgmental processes. But
how is one to model such heterogeneous processes? The early philosophical
writings of Henri Bergson are of particular usefulness in constructing such a
model. In Matière et mémoire, first published in French at the end of the nine-
teenth century and translated into English as Matter and Memory, Bergson pre-
sented his original contributions to what were, even then, long-standing philo-
sophical arguments concerning the temporal nature and operation of memory
and perception. Suzanne Guerlac has recently revisited Bergson’s early work in
the light of contemporary concerns; it is her translations and commentaries on
Bergson’s early philosophy that I draw on here.
Contra Kant, Bergson radically reconfigured perception in terms of action,
not knowledge. As Guerlac (2006, 107) has written: “Perception, [Bergson]
maintains, serves action not knowledge. It functions so that we might . . . satisfy
our needs.” Later, she adds that “actual perception is . . . a process of reduc-
tion, or elimination, of what does not pertain to our own actions, which occur
in the service of our interests and needs” (ibid., 110). To the context of mak-
ing (new) music with (old) jazz standards, Bergson’s notion of actual percep-
tion is, I believe, highly pertinent. Approaching my practice-as-research with
Bergson’s “actual” perception in mind, then, I have been working to attract the
interests and potentially satisfy the needs of the musicians and listeners I make
music with and for, respectively. In such a situation it is, of course, impossible to
know with any degree of exactitude what motivates the interests and needs of

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 Steve Tromans

others. However, in terms of music-disciplinary practice, I suggest that, rather

than attempt to replicate an older pattern of knowing, a common ground can
be drawn on in the service of new jazz. By this I mean that, given an appropri-
ate background in jazz performance practice with the standard repertoire on
the part of the two musicians involved (myself and Wheeler), and given suita-
bly qualified listeners to the recorded album, a certain amount of freedom—a
“freedom to”—is afforded the practice-as-research experiment.
In using the term “freedom to,” above, I am making a distinction between
“freedom from” and “freedom to.” In other words, I am keen to stress that the
freedom afforded expert musicians in their experiments with the making of
new music is born of their ability to operate in and through music-discipli-
nary practices, rather than being entirely independent of them—hence, it is
a freedom to experiment, rather than a freedom from disciplinary responsi-
bility. Further, I would argue that such an experimental freedom is inherent in
all jazz-standard practice at the expert level. One need only think of the many
groundbreaking experiments with the standard repertoire that have marked
the history of jazz practice since its emergence as a music-disciplinary field. In
terms of Klenner and Lewis’s “Just Friends,” used in my own duo experiments
with Wheeler, of the huge number of performances given of this piece during
the history of jazz, I would reference as being especially experimental (and
influential on my formative years as a student of jazz) that of the pianist Cecil
Taylor, which was recorded in 1958 for his album Stereo Drive (1959). The album,
featuring the saxophonist John Coltrane, the trumpeter Kenny Dorham, the
bassist Chuck Israels, and the drummer Louis Hayes, was initially dismissed in
the jazz press, and was for many years considered of interest only to obsessive
collectors of Coltrane’s and Taylor’s recorded oeuvres.
However, time and jazz practice have moved on since the late 1950s, and to
the ears of those who are familiar with the performance practices of the free
jazz movement in the 1960s and beyond, there is, I would argue, much of inter-
est in Taylor’s approach to “Just Friends.” There is no room here for a detailed
analysis of the quintet’s performance of this jazz standard. However, I would
suggest that the unusual (for its time) combination of Taylor’s nascent free jazz
music-making techniques with the remainder of the band’s predominantly
bebop/hard bop jazz-standard stylings opened new ground for music-making
with the standard repertoire—ground that is central to my own experimen-
tal undertakings in my doctoral practice-as-research. Taylor’s “Just Friends,” I
am suggesting, provides a historical example of an experiment in jazz-standard
practice that served his needs and interests in radically altering more estab-
lished (standardised) ways of playing the standard repertoire. That radical
alteration certainly reduced and eliminated (to use Bergson’s terms, quoted
above) the dominant aspects of 1950s performance practice with “Just Friends”
that were not of interest to Taylor. In the light of the jazz that has followed
this early-career experiment (he was only twenty-nine when the performance
was recorded), I believe we can say that Taylor’s needs and interests have finally
found their intended time and audience—at least among those listeners who
have kept abreast of developments in jazz practice in the fifty-plus years since

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 Experiments in Time

the release of Stereo Drive. His jazz-standard practice on that album has cer-
tainly fuelled my own experiments in practice-as-research with the standard
repertoire.
The issue of attracting the interests and satisfying the needs of the different
parties related to experimental practice-as-research with jazz standards leads
back to Guerlac on Bergson, and thus the question of the nature and operation
of perception itself and its close relationship with memory. Guerlac (2006, 118)
has written that, for Bergson, “memory mixes in with perception all the time for
the simple reason that it takes time for perception to occur.” This is a vital point,
since—because we tend to prioritise the visual mode of perception—we often
make the assumption that perception is an instantaneous act: light enters our
eye at such a speed that it provides us with the illusion of an immediate percep-
tive apprehension. If instead, we consider perception in another mode—say,
tactile perception—it is easier to reconcile Bergson’s temporally-constituted
notion of perception. After all, when we touch an object, or run our hands over
it, it takes a certain amount of time to carry out that action.4
So, in Bergson’s view, since perception “takes time . . . to occur” (ibid.), mem-
ory interweaves the past into the present such that it is practically insepara-
ble from perception (ibid., 122). In fact, Bergson’s fully-developed argument
arrives at the conclusion that the act of perception “ends up being nothing but
an occasion for remembering” (ibid., 120). To remember (re-member) is to “put
together again”; thus I conclude that while experiencing the Steve Tromans
and JJ Wheeler Duo’s performance of “Just Friends,” someone familiar with
that jazz standard would be affected by the experimental nature of the duo’s
music-making. I also believe that they would likely be encouraged to undertake
a remembering of their preconceptions of how that particular piece of music
is typically played. That re-membering would mix together their memories
of previous experiences of the piece and their perceptions in the moment of
encountering the duo’s experimental performance. The question of whether
that particular listener would consider the performance to be of a quality suf-
ficient to stand comparison with the wider body of professional jazz perfor-
mance is the last point I address.

J udg M ents oF di s c i pli na r y pertin en c e an d Q uality

In regard to the complex temporal process of remembering that accompanies

the experience of music-making (both listening and playing), and with specific
reference to my project of experimenting with alternative ways of making music
with jazz standards, what of the question of the judgment of disciplinary per-
tinence? How might a model of such a disciplinary judgment be constructed?
In his early-1960s monograph on Kant, Gilles Deleuze ([1984] 2008, 49)
cast the process of judgment as “a complex operation which subsumes the

4 My thanks to Dr. James Tartaglia, Philosophy Department, Keele University (UK), for this insight and
example.

255
 Steve Tromans

particular under the general.” That complex operation, Deleuze wrote, is

“always irreducible or original,” and “never consists in one faculty alone, but in
their accord” (ibid., 51). However, that accord, which results from the complex
operation of judgmental process, is of a discordant nature: an “unregulated
exercise of all the faculties,” or a “discord which produces accord.” “The facul-
ties confront one another,” Deleuze wrote, “each stretched to its own limit, and
find their accord in a fundamental discord” (ibid., xii–xiii).
Anything newly-encountered is potentially perceived in discordant terms,
compared with the comfortable familiarity of what is already known (as I
hinted at earlier in referring to my initial encounter with bebop). When con-
sidered in terms of my research and the disciplinary field of jazz practice, the
interesting question is whether that “discordant accord” is judged (ultimately,
or more immediately) as belonging to that field and being exemplary of twen-
ty-first-century jazz practice. As with all such judgments of taste and quality,
the outcome will emerge in time (though it is, of course, also subject to change
over time) as part of that larger process in which one’s art is entered into rela-
tion with that of one’s peers and predecessors. In the meantime, what we can
do as artists (and artist-researchers) is continue our experiments—both again,
and anew.

c o nc ludi ng reM ar Ks

By experimenting with the ways in which jazz standards can be played, but
simultaneously and deliberately grounding such experimentation in profes-
sional work in jazz, I would hope, at the very least, that a productive dialogue
can be encouraged in which enthusiasts and musicians alike are made aware of
temporally-grounded judgmental processes that were previously of a more hid-
den nature. If a music-research project in jazz practice can bring such processes
to the surface by experimenting with pieces from the jazz canon, then I would
speculate that similar artistic experiments can—and should—be undertaken
in relation to the canon of works in other music-disciplinary fields. Music-
disciplinary fields active in the contemporary era are in an on-going process of
development, and are not fully-defined, or definable, in their consistency and
practice (otherwise they would be “dead” arts). An experimental attitude to the
making of new music can provide a means of ensuring this on-going elabora-
tion of the performing practice of the standard repertoire—or at the very least
encouraging it—rather than focusing on the reiteration of extant performance
practices or interpretative models of the role of performers in their relation
to the canon of works pertinent to their particular disciplinary field (i.e., per-
former as experimenter, rather than interpreter).

n o te
Practice-as-Research. In music terms, I define practice-as-research as research
conducted in music-making itself. Rather than undertaking research into
music-making, from the position of an observer, practice-as-research ena-

256
 Experiments in Time

bles musicians to undertake research in the medium of their particular art

practice.
This is not to suggest, however, that research conducted in art-practice can
directly be recognised as such by those operating in other research-discipli-
nary fields—which is problematic with regard to its dissemination in the
wider research community. In order to address this problem of transferabil-
ity, research conducted in a particular field of art practice requires a framing
discourse to enable wider dissemination. The important issue, however, is that
this framing discourse is not taken as being representative of the artistic prac-
tice it is composed to companion.
The research work conducted in the artist’s own medium of practice remains
in that medium, with the inherent complexities, temporalities, and specifici-
ties of that artistic field of practice. These complexities, temporalities, and spe-
cificities are different for each field of art practice; crucially, such disciplinary
differences provide interesting opportunities for research activity—in meth-
odological terms, and with regard to modes of presentation of research. The
potential widening of the field of research endeavour implicit in the notion of
practice-as-research augurs well for the future development of research in the
twenty-first century and beyond.

References
Deleuze, Gilles. (1984) 2008. Kant’s Guerlac, Suzanne. 2006. Thinking in Time: An
Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Introduction to Henri Bergson. Ithaca, NY:
Faculties. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson Cornell University Press.
and Barbara Habberjam. London: Massumi, Brian. 2002. Parables for the Virtual:
Continuum. First published 1963 as La Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham, NC:
philosophie critique de Kant (doctrine des Duke University Press.
facultés) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Orpheus Research Centre in Music.
France). 2010. “Artistic Experimentation in
———. (2003) 2005. Francis Bacon: The Music.” Orpheus Institute. Accessed 10
Logic of Sensation. Translated by Daniel December. http://www.orpheusinstituut.
W. Smith. London: Continuum. First be/en/research-centre-orcim/research-
published 1981 as Francis Bacon: Logique projects.
de la sensation (Paris: Editions de la Taylor, Cecil. 1959. Stereo Drive. United
Différance). Artists, UAS 5014, CD.
Falzone, James. 2011. Untitled liner note
for Klang: Other Doors. Chicago: Allos
Documents, 006.

257
 Ecosonics:
Music and Birdsong,
Ends and Beginnings

Stephen Preston

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
—T. S. Eliot1

In this article I will give a brief account of certain aspects of my research that
touch on the problems of prior knowledge and ideological thinking in cre-
ating a new practice. To illustrate the problems, I will outline the resources I
employed, and the ideas, techniques, and approaches that I have used in my
research. At the same time I hope to show how the research subject itself was
the means for deconstructing these ideologies, some of which were encultured
and others self-constructed.
As one of the pioneers of period instrument and historically informed per-
formance in Britain in the 1970s, I am a musician who has spent almost all his
professional career researching and experimenting with ideas relating to inter-
pretation and performance techniques and practice. In addition to my musi-
cal career, I spent many years researching historical dance while working as a
choreographer and director of two dance companies. Consequently, although
the focus was very different, I felt reasonably well equipped to undertake a
doctoral research project into birdsong as a model for the development of
new techniques and improvisational practice with the Baroque flute (Preston
2004). I began my research with the sense that I had a good understanding of
what constitutes music and the conviction that my understanding was more
than adequate. From previous experience I believed I was equipped to find and
investigate source material and to explore that material methodically as cre-
ative practice. I had no qualms in contradicting traditionally accepted main-
stream practice. Also I felt reasonably secure in the knowledge that I had at

1 From Eliot, “Little Gidding,” V.

259
 Stephen Preston

the very least a basic understanding of avian vocalisation—for example, that

the sounds produced by birds consisted of both songs and calls. What would
be more problematic for my research was that unwittingly I subscribed to the
culturally held views that some birdsong was musical and the rest was noise,
including most calls, and that we in the UK were fortunate in having the largest
number of the most musical songbirds in the world.2 I shared the tacit under-
standing that the sounds produced by birds are called songs because they are
considered to be a form of music, as the use of the word “song” attests—a view
held not only popularly but also by many in the science community, particularly
in the past.3
During my research I found the categorisations of avian sound making that
are necessary to the scientific consideration of birds were counterproductive
to the musical consideration of birdsong, not least because the categories,
scientifically necessary as they are, lend themselves to attitudinal distinctions
of musical and non-musical qualities. From a non-scientific point of view
I now regard all forms of communicative sounds made by birds as birdsong.
Consequently all further references to birdsong in this chapter must be under-
stood to apply equally to songs, calls, and non-vocal sounds, that is, those made
instrumentally, for example, by beak or wing.
As models for developing the theoretical and practical means of this research,
naturally I drew heavily on my experience of (re)creating past performing prac-
tices and techniques on the basis of historical sources. This experience encom-
passed music—the investigation of historical flute technique and performance
practice, and dance—and the reconstruction of dances, dance techniques, and
choreographies from images, texts, and notations (see Preston 2004, 12–15).
What these earlier investigations offered were models for research and the
reassurance that I had the ability to create a new practice where there had been
none before. I was accustomed to working from a virtually blank slate, which, in
the case of music meant there were not the faintest echoes of historical sounds,
and in dance no historical moving bodies.4
My research fell into two distinct stages, the first of preparation, the sec-
ond of implementation. During the preparatory stage I worked on creating a
language and a vocabulary of sounds to translate birdsong into music, and to
establish a basic system for developing improvisation modelled on birdsong.

2 To give some examples: from the eighteenth century “Experiments and Observations on the Singing of
Birds” by Daines Barrington (1773), from the nineteenth century William Gardiner’s The Music of Nature
([1832] 1838), to the twentieth century Charles Hartshorne’s Born to Sing (1973).
3 The range of popular and scientific work considering birdsong as music is considerable. Usually in
such works, however, questions considering what music may or may not be are not raised and typically
the subject is explored with the implicit understanding that the measure of music is that of traditional
Western culture. Historically this attitude is understandable but from the second half of the twentieth
century up to the present it becomes increasingly difficult to take such a view seriously, particularly as
it contributes nothing to the understanding of music or to the possible relationship between human
music and animal sound making.
4 It is easy to forget that historical performance is historical only in name and in relation to its sources,
that all its practitioners, no matter how skilled or convincing, are only representative either of their
own practice inevitably shaped by contemporary culture and derived from historical source material of
varying quality, or of practice learned from other practitioners.

260
 Ecosonics

This came to fruition in the second stage with the development of a systematic
approach to developing exercises and improvisation modelled on a range of
birdsong types and characteristics. I called this approach ecosonic.
The preparatory first stage proceeded in a series of approaches based on my
research into historical performance (ibid., 27–28). This involved the develop-
ment of extended techniques (ibid., 27–49) and the exploration of scale sys-
tems,5 and atonal and microtonal scales.6 For extended techniques I researched
method books and music from the eighteenth to twenty-first centuries (see
ibid., 141–42). The flute is rich in such resources. Additionally I created tech-
niques effective only on the Baroque flute, which not being covered in keys and
mechanism enables the player to have direct contact with the body of the instru-
ment.7 After exploring various scale possibilities, including Olivier Messiaen’s
modes of limited transposition, I worked on the encyclopaedic compilation
by Nicolas Slonimsky (1947). Slonimsky’s scales, which are based on the equal
division of the octave, offered many more possibilities for improvisation, from
extreme simplicity to complexity.8 However, it became apparent that no kind
of tonal system would give me what I was seeking, that augmented and dimin-
ished intervals would not capture the colour of birdsong even though that was
typical of the way it had been translated in the twentieth century, that it was
impossible to capture the subtle, indeterminate pitch inflections of birdsong
using a vocabulary based on intervals no smaller than a semitone, and that such
a vocabulary was rigidly overdetermined.
I moved on to exploring quartertone and microtonal scales (Preston 2004,
54–61). The fingerings for a Baroque flute quartertone scale were given in a
mid-eighteenth century French flute method by Charles Delusse, L’art de la
flûte traversière (1761).9 It was a tablature I had long known about and studiously
ignored as too difficult and superfluous to the requirements of historical per-
formance practice. I was delighted to find a purpose for it as it sat well with
other historical techniques I was incorporating into my research (including a
fingering chart for playing harmonics also from Delusse) and with my convic-
tion that old practices can always provide a fertile source for new ideas. In con-
junction with the Delusse scale I investigated the microtonal scale system of
Harry Partch (1974).10 Although solving the problem of semitone-based inter-
vals, this approach also proved musically and technically unusable on my flute.
Shaped by my tonal background, I was unable to improvise spontaneously in
microtones and the fingering difficulties posed by playing them were equally
antithetical to spontaneity. But the result of these investigations was to open
up my traditional conceptions of what constituted the materials of music and
the possibilities of treating the instrument as a means to an end rather than as

5 For example, Ernő Lendvai’s Symmetries of Music: An Introduction to Semantics of Music (1993).
6 For examples of Slonimsky, Partch, and Delusse scales see Preston (2004, 49–59).
7 See figure 1.1 in Preston (2004, 21).
8 For examples of Slonimsky scales see figure 2.2.1 a–b in Preston (2004, 51–52).
9 The section including the quartertone fingering chart and a short illustrative air was possibly not by
Delusse (see Reilly and Solum 1992). For the “Delusse” scale see figure 2.3.1 in Preston (2004, 56).
10 For examples of Delusse and Partch scales see figures 2.3.1 and 2.3.2 in Preston (2004, 56, 59).

261
 Stephen Preston

an end in itself. It led me finally to the intellectual and, more significantly, the
emotional realisation that the instrument is simply an object with which we
extend our physical abilities to make music; that the inner necessity of music
is not necessarily fulfilled by tone-based vocabularies possibly spiced with the
special effects of extended techniques. Thus I came to regard the Baroque
flute simply as what it is, an object that may be used to make music—that is, an
instrument, a conical wooden tube pierced by eight holes one of which is cov-
ered with a small metal flap with a spring to keep it closed; and I came to regard
music as the sounds I might make with that object. And having deconstructed
my conceptions of music and instrument, the first phase of my research moved
into its culminating exploration, the mapping of all physically possible finger-
ings on the Baroque flute—128 in total (Preston 2004, 62–66).
The result of the finger-mapping process was the second phase that began
with a hiatus. Although opening up the sonic possibilities for which I’d been
searching, the 128 fingerings and the sounds they produced were no more mean-
ingfully related than were items on a shopping list.11 The systematic organisa-
tion of these fingerings, which enabled me to use them and led to the creation
of ecosonics, came about by chance. It emerged from what was notably the first
unplanned process in my research. Playing for time while becalmed in this hia-
tus I tried to enlarge my insight into the expressive potential of silence, which is
a significant, communicative element in the song of many birds between indi-
vidual phrases and singing bouts. I believed I might find a useful analogy in the
expressive use of space in traditional Chinese painting (see ibid., 145–46). In
reading about the philosophy of Chinese painting, my attention was drawn to
the ancient Chinese “Book of Changes,” the I Ching (see ibid., 151). Here was
an analogy but not between space and silence. The analogy was between the
six-line figures—the hexagrams or gua—that are the basis of the I Ching and
the six holes of the Baroque flute, between the 128 broken and unbroken line
combinations of the 64 I Ching hexagrams and the 128 open- and closed-hole
finger combinations of the six holes of the flute.12 The question of how to turn
these figures into a dynamic fingering system was answered on further reading
about Leibniz’s development of binary arithmetic and its relationship to the
I Ching.13 The answer lay in transferring Leibniz’s digital system of zeros and
ones to the six holes of the flute and the six digits employed to open and close
them, organising them as a series of finger rows in which three fingers moved
and three remained static (ibid., 68–85).14 Having created a physical system for
organising the fingerings, I was finally able to develop improvisations and exer-
cises modelled on birdsong, and ecosonics began to take shape (ibid., 92–108).
It was not far into the first phase of my research that I realised the situation
was unlike my early research into historical performance and Baroque flute
technique in one important respect: there was no source material beyond the

11 For an example of a shopping list of fingering combinations see figure 2.4.1 in Preston (2004, 65).
12 See figures 3.1 and 3.2 in Preston (2004, 69–70).
13 A parallel brought to Leibniz’s attention by a missionary friend in China (see Schönberger 1992).
14 See table 3.1 and figures 3.5 and 3.6 in Preston (2004, 73, 84) and “Appendix 4” (ibid., 178–80) for graph-
ic and photographic examples.

262
 Ecosonics

subject. More gradually I would discover that what I considered to be facili-

tating knowledge and experience could prove to be more of an obstruction to
learning than ignorance. I had assumed, for example, that Messiaen’s work and
other developments in twentieth-century music had prepared the ground for
creating birdsong-inspired music. I looked to the writings of Kandinsky and the
Blaue Reiter group15 as exemplars of originating, cross-disciplinary creativity.16 I
thought I could draw an array of historical and contemporary flute resources to
research and develop a musical birdsong vocabulary, and out of the many varied
contemporary genres of improvisation and tonal systems I could model an avi-
an-inspired improvisational language. But I was mistaken. These were unques-
tioned assumptions that initially served as means for exploring ideas. But as
each failed to provide anticipated solutions the assumptions seemed merely a
process of stumbling from one blind alley into another. It was difficult to recog-
nise that each apparent failure was in fact a step forward, that the formulation
of an approach and the investigation of its possibilities to the point where it
was clearly no longer feasible led to the formulation of new approaches and
new possibilities. Gradually I was acquiring the creative means for an outcome
I had been unable to envisage until the moment of its emergence.
In reviewing my research I came to understand that unlearning—the decon-
struction of ideas and ideologies—was absolutely vital to discovery and the
creation of new work. However, although it is easy to say that only a madman
keeps doing the same things while expecting them to change, the problem is
one of knowing that this is the bind one is in. For me these changes happened
because of the repeated challenges to my (pre)conceptions about music in rela-
tion to insistent open-minded listening and the unfolding creative response to
birdsong, coupled with profound ignorance about what I was actually trying
to achieve. The means I adopted from existing practice proved incapable of
realising the different, infinitely varied, and often indeterminate sound world
I was conceiving in response to birdsong. Identifying and understanding why
existing practice was unsuitable for achieving a particular goal was a major part
of the process.
In effect progress was made through a series of small epiphanies. Central to
this process was the task of identifying essential qualities of birdsong and the
growth of an inner necessity to realise them (see Preston 2004, 86). The neces-
sity to give a satisfying musical voice to these qualities only became more insist-
ent with each failure to capture them. I needed a scale system capable of repre-
senting the endless intervallic fluidity of avian voices, one that enabled me to
play with the physical freedom and volubility of song and to retain the rhythmic
subtlety of song. I needed also to be able to play with a sense of unpredicta-
bility, a quality of spontaneity that for me was present even in short repetitive
birdsong. The choice of atonal scales with their augmented and diminished
intervals was an unconscious attempt to emulate the microtonal inflections of
bird song, but they resulted in improvisations that sounded like the worst cli-

15 Kandinsky ([1914] 1977; [1947] 1979; [1982] 1994); Kandinsky and Marc ([1974] 1989).
16 For a summary of interdisciplinary areas of research see Preston (2004, 109–23).

263
 Stephen Preston

chés of poor 1960s music. Most problematically, I could not help but improvise
in a way that reproduced birdsong not as I heard and felt it but as I’d precon-
ceived it from all the birdsong music I’d ever played or heard.
Microtonal scales provided a partial solution in that they offered greater
interval flexibility, but the potential complexity and technical difficulty of play-
ing them I found impracticable as a basis for improvisation. (Not everybody
agrees! What makes it technically very awkward for fluent improvisation on the
Baroque flute is partially covering very small finger holes with reasonable accu-
racy and at speed—that is, so that you still get a sound and a change in pitch.)
But I had progressed to the point where after one final step, the mapping of all
possible fingerings, I could move on to evolving a system that did enable me
to begin working with what I felt as the essential qualities of birdsong. In this
respect two aspects of my previous experience as a musician and as a choreog-
rapher were fundamental, both relating to sound and embodiment, the for-
mer relating to the sounds being given meaning by the expressive body and the
latter the sounds that find meaning in the expressive body. In both instances
the source of this understanding derived from historical perspectives, first in
the perception of a close relationship between spoken language and music
(Preston 2004, 118–23, 126–30), and second in the inseparable connection
between music and the dancing body. Without this understanding it is unlikely
that ecosonics would have taken the form that it did, as a physical rather than
a tonal system, one that simultaneously solved the problems of musical encul-
turation, and of over-determined interval relationships and tonal qualities.
With ecosonics I created a way of improvising with the embodied immediacy of
birdsong, an approach where human and animal sound making might merge
as music.

References
Barrington, Daines. 1773. “Experiments and Hartshorne, Charles. 1973. Born to Sing: An
Observations on the Singing of Birds.” Interpretation and World Survey of Bird Song.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
of London 63: 249–91. Kandinsky, Wassily. (1914) 1977. Concerning
Delusse, Charles. 1761. L’art de la flûte the Spiritual in Art. Translated by M. T. H.
traversière. Paris. Reprinted 1973 as Sadler. New York: Dover Publications.
Principes de la flûte traversière (Geneva: First published 1912 as Über das Geistige
Minkoff Reprints). in der Kunst: Insbesondere in der Malerei
Eliot, T. S. 1943. “Little Gidding.” In Four (Munich: R. Piper). This translation first
Quartets. New York: Harcourt, Brace. published 1914 as The Art of Spiritual
Gardiner, William. (1832) 1838. The Music of Harmony (London: Constable).
Nature; or, An Attempt to Prove that what is ———. (1947) 1979. Point and Line to Plane.
Passionate and Pleasing in the Art of Singing, Translated by Howard Dearstyne and
Speaking, and Performing upon Musical Hilla Rebay. Edited by Hilla Rebay. New
Instruments, is derived from the Sounds of the York: Dover Publications. First published
Animated World. Boston: J. H. Wilkins & R. 1926 as Punkt und Linie zu Fläche: Beitrag
B. Carter. First published 1832 (London: zur Analyse der malerischen Elemente
Longman, Raes, Orme). (Munich: A. Langen). This translation
first published 1947 (New York: Solomon
R. Guggenheim Foundation).

264
 Ecosonics

———. (1982) 1994. Kandinsky: Complete Partch, Harry. 1974. Genesis of a Music: An
Writings on Art. Edited by Kenneth C. Account of a Creative Work, Its Roots and Its
Lindsay and Peter Vergo. New York: Da Fulfilments. 2nd ed. New York: Da Capo.
Capo Press. First published 1982 (Boston, Preston, Stephen. 2004. Bird Song as a Basis
MA: Hall; London: Faber and Faber). for New Techniques and Improvisational
Kandinsky, Wassily, and Franz Marc, eds. Practice with the Baroque Flute. PhD thesis,
(1974) 1989. The Blaue Reiter Almanac. Dartington College of Arts, University of
Edited by Klaus Lankheit. Translated Plymouth.
by Henning Falkenstein with Manug Reilly, Edward R., and John Solum. 1992.
Terzian and Gertrude Hinderlie. “De Lusse, Buffardin, and an Eighteenth-
Documentary ed. New York: Da Capo Century Quarter Tone Piece.” Historical
Press. First published 1912 as Der Blaue Performance 5 (1): 19–23.
Reiter (Munich: Piper). Documentary ed. Schönberger, Martin Maria. 1992. The I Ching
first published 1965 (Munich: Piper), this and the Genetic Code: The Hidden Key to
translation of which first published 1974 Life. Translated by D. Q. Stephenson.
(London: Thames and Hudson; New 2nd ed. Santa Fe, NM: Aurora Press. First
York: Viking Press). published 1973 as Verborgener Schlüssel zum
Lendvai, Ernő. 1993. Symmetries of Music: Leben: Welt-Formel I-Ging im genetischen
An Introduction to Semantics of Music. Code (Bern: Barth). This translation
Compiled and edited by Miklós Szabó first published 1979 (New York: ASI
and Miklós Mohay. Kecskemét, Hungary: Publishers).
Kodály Institute. Slonimsky, Nicolas. 1947. Thesaurus of Scales
and Melodic Patterns. New York: Scribner.

265
Section IV
Sound
and Space:
Environments
and Interactions
It has become clear in recent decades that new ways of thinking about the
materials and practices of music necessitate a fundamental reconception of the
spaces (both metaphorical and literal) in which that music is presented. This
idea has roots in several parallel streams of twentieth-century musical thought.
Early in the century Charles Ives imagined music to be performed outdoors, or
indoors in a particular spatial configuration. His conceptions were extended
in the US by Henry Brant, pioneer of spatial composition, and in Europe by,
among others, Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose Gruppen (1955) calls for three
orchestras spatially separated. But a further source is in the attitudes of the
historical performance movement, whose interest in authentic instruments,
tunings and performance practices may be extended, as pianist Tom Beghin
does in this section, to a consideration of the acoustics in which that music was
originally heard.
Any performance environment will shape the music heard there;
but this fact may be used deliberately by the composer to create an inter-
play between material and environment that generates new forms of musical
expression. The papers here by Paul Craenen (on Alvin Lucier) and Hans Roels
(an interview with Agostino Di Scipio) both focus on the work of sound artists
who have given a powerful impetus to the exploration of the performance space
almost as a co-composer of the music, equivalent perhaps to an immobile–but
far from passive–performer. More specifically piano-based concerns to exper-
imental performance is the subject of the article by Catherine Laws, exploring
new approaches to practising the unusual demands of Morton Feldman’s late
piano music. Juan Parra asks questions relevant to artistic creation as research
with regard to his own work; and Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö offer
philosophical examinations of ancient Greek aesthetic conceptions and their
relevance to new artistic practices today, with special regard to performance.
Unlike the other texts in this anthology, there may be some profit in reading
the four texts by Coessens and Östersjö (one of them with co-author Henrik
Frisk) in the order in which they are presented here.

s pea Ki ng a nd s in g in g in d i FFeren t r o oM s – P au l c raen en

Paul Craenen here examines one of the classics of experimental music, Alvin
Lucier’s I am sitting in a room (1969), for speaking voice and live electronics.
Viewing the piece as a work of “conceptual process music,” he traces some of
the antecedents and kinships of the work in both earlier and contemporaneous
artistic practices. He examines such matters as the role of semantic intelligibil-
ity in our perception of the voice, and the behaviour of the room in which the
work is performed in tracing the psychoacoustic phenomena unleashed by the
process to which Lucier subjects his material.

268
 e x per i M ent in p r ac ti c e – c atherine l aw S
This paper explores what it might mean to practise a composition experi-
mentally: to approach it with an experimental mind-set. With reference to
the last solo piano work of Morton Feldman, Palais De Mari, Catherine Laws
explores pianistic strategies of touch, tone and resonance, and their relevance
to Feldman’s pared-down sound world. The use of near-repetition and of what
Feldman termed “memory forms” pose challenges for the pianist in giving
shape to the twenty-five minutes of the piece, with its subtle use of rhythm and
metre in a texture without dramatic incident or contrasts. The paper argues for
the “practice of practising as an experimental process,” “as oriented towards
situations with unknown outcomes.”

t he v i r tua l h aydn : a n e xperiM en t in r ec o rd in g ,

p erF o rM i ng a nd p ubli s h i ng – t o m B e Gh in
This paper reflects on a project to apply “virtual acoustics” to a complete record-
ing of Joseph Haydn’s solo keyboard works. Fascinated not just by the pursuit
of authentic instrumentation in the performance of these works, Tom Beghin
became fascinated by the nature of the acoustic spaces in which these works
would originally have been heard, and the effect of such environmental condi-
tions on the music. The paper offers an ex post facto reflection on two premises
of the project: the abrogation of the principle of “one piano fits all,” replacing a
single Steinway by a variety of historical keyboards, newly constructed to meet
the highest possible standards; and second, the replacement of “the single con-
cert hall,” one type of acoustic space—usually designed to “project” the music
to “the audience”—with a variety of rooms that may historically not even have
been exclusively devoted to playing or listening to music, such as ceremonial
halls, salons, or a composer’s study.

o n l i f e i S t oo P r ec i ou S : b len d in g M u sic al an d r esearc h

g oals thr o ugh e x per i M entatio n – j uan P arra
This final paper questions the too easy conflation of artistic practice and
research–the claim that what artists normally do in itself constitutes research.
Juan Parra argues that for composers, a second trap lurks within the notion
that creating a new work and “producing new knowledge” are one and the
same thing and, therefore, that the act of creating music is equivalent to that
of conducting research. With regard to several of his own works, the paper
demonstrates which elements of the research process respond to a fundamen-
tal need—or question—that transcends the status of output, and how the for-
mulation of these enquiries shapes the artistic process.

269
 i nter vi e W With a g o stin o d i s c ipio – h an S r o elS
In February 2012 the Italian composer, sound artist, music theorist, and scholar
Agostino Di Scipio visited the Orpheus Institute. He gave a lecture-perfor-
mance during which he performed parts of his solo live-electronics composi-
tion Feedback Study and a new work for flute and electronics. The interaction
between sound, performance space, technology, and performer has become
central to Di Scipio’s work, the live electronics reacting to the acoustic char-
acteristics of the hall or to unexpected sounds and, in their turn, changing the
sound in the hall. Hans Roels took the opportunity to talk with Di Scipio about
his work and his attitudes to sound, space and time.

K a i r o s i n th e F loW oF M u sic al i n tu itio n – K athleen

c oe S Sen S a nD S tefan Ö Ster SjÖ
This text considers processes of artistic decision as both intuition- and expert-
driven. The reflection upon the making of Richard Karpen’s ”Strandlines”
offers an artistic entry into the philosophical notions of intuition and kairos.
From Aristotle, through Descartes to Henri Bergson and James Gibson, the
authors argue that musical intuition can be understood as a particular inter-
action between analytical and tacit cognition, situated in the musician’s body.

h a bi tus a nd th e resistan c e oF c u ltu re – K athleen

c oe S Sen S a nD S tefan Ö Ster SjÖ
Starting from the premise that “[m]usical performance demands the re-
enactment of previously imprinted and embodied expert practices,” the
authors discuss the Aristotelian concept of the habitus, “a general, mainly tacitly
and socially acquired whole of embodied patterns for action and behaviour,”
and its more recent relevance to the writings of Marcel Mauss, Pierre Bourdieu,
Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others. The paper contains observations of the
authors’ own artistic practices in two projects—Inside Outside and IDIOMS—
offering practice-based studies of their theoretical assumptions.

r epeti ti o n , r eso n an c e an d d isc ern Men t – K athleen

c oe S SenS , h en riK f riSK an D S tefan Ö SterSjÖ
This paper centres around issues in rehearsing and performing Henrik Frisk’s
composition Repetition Repeats All Other Repetitions, commissioned and pre-
miered by Stefan Östersjö. The collaboration between composer and performer
was a complex one, in that the musician had to find a way of negotiating open
form in a way that made coherent musical sense of the material. The authors
discuss issues of discernment in establishing continuities, and the moments of
kairos (a concept futher elucidated in other articles by these authors in this vol-
ume) in musical performance. The outcome, a form of “resonance negotiated
by intuition,” is described in the paper’s conclusion.

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 i ntui ti o n , h ex i s , a nd r es istan c e – K athleen c o eSSenS ,
S tefa n Ö Ster S jÖ
Is there a difference between artistic experimentation and the making of exper-
iments in the sciences? Despite the many ways in which these kinds of action
can be said to be distinguishable from one another, the authors avoid identify-
ing a wide range of differences between experimentation in science and in the
arts, concentrating instead on the notion that experimental practices in the
arts seem not to deal with actions of which the outcome is unknown, but rather
with the creation of systems of interrelated forces and agents in which the out-
come can be intuitively known, through the tacit knowing situated in the musi-
cian’s body. Drawing on empirical evidence from the three preceding texts,
here, the authors attempt at drawing the theoretical discussion together into a
discussion of musical experimentation from the perspective of the embodied
knowing of the musician.

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 Speaking and Singing
in Different Rooms:
Conceptuality and Variation in
Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in a Room1

Paul Craenen
Director Musica, Impulse Centre for Music

I am sitting in a room
different from the one you are in now.
I am recording the sound of my speaking voice
and I am going to play it back into the room
again and again
until the resonant frequencies of the room
reinforce themselves
so that any semblance of my speech,
with perhaps the exception of rhythm,
is destroyed.
What you will hear, then,
are the natural resonant frequencies of the room
articulated by speech.
I regard this activity not so much
as a demonstration of a physical fact, but,
more as a way to smooth out
any irregularities my speech might have.

a lv i n l uc i er ’ s vo i c e o n the o rig in al rec o rd in g (1969)

The words above are the beginning of one of the most striking works in the
history of experimental music.2 In the first recording, from 1969,3 Alvin Lucier
speaks the words slowly, occasionally interrupted by a hesitation (Lucier has a

1 Translated from Dutch by Helen White.

2 It should be noted that Lucier’s score only offers this text as a suggestion; any other text may be used
instead.
3 Lucier has continued to make other versions, each recorded in a different room and with a different
duration. The original recording from 1969 will be used as a reference in the rest of the article. This
originally appeared as an addition to the magazine Source: Music of the Avant-Garde (vol 7), edited by Lar-
ry Austin and Douglas Kahn. The recording may be accessed on ubuweb: http://www.ubu.com/sound/
source.html (accessed July 1 2013).

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 Paul Craenen

stutter). Immediately afterwards, we hear exactly what Lucier’s voice describes.

The same words are heard again, but there is an audible difference in sound
colour and an increase in the background noise. The difference in colour is
caused by the resonance characteristics of the room in which the original
recording is played and simultaneously re-recorded. The same process is then
repeated many times. In each new recording, the resonances thicken and the
room’s own frequencies are increasingly emphasised.4 Thus the intelligibility
of the words slowly erodes to make way for clusters of feedback tones. After
about a dozen recording cycles, the voice is completely erased. What remains
is a soundscape of ringing, resonant drones whose phrasing provides the only
vague memory of the words spoken.

c o nc eptua l pro c ess Mu sic

I Am Sitting in a Room is one of the rare examples in twentieth-century music

of a work worthy of the label “conceptual music.” In the definition provided
by Sol LeWitt, a conceptual artwork is characterised by an idea or concept that
determines all the aspects of that artwork. The concept “becomes a machine
that makes the art” (Lewitt [1967] 2002, 846).
As a young man, Steve Reich took a similar approach in his much-cited article
“Music as a Gradual Process” (1968) (and it is no coincidence that it dates from
the same period as I Am Sitting in a Room). In this article Reich defines “process
music” as work in which “the process” determines all the musical relationships,
both at micro-level and in terms of the overall form (he offers the principle of
the canon as an example). By analogy to the machine-like nature of LeWitt’s
description of a concept, Reich considers the musical process to be an autono-
mous, impersonal phenomenon: “once the process is set up and loaded it runs
by itself ” (Reich [1968] 2002, 34).5 The composer’s role is limited to defining
the process and determining the starting conditions. In doing so the composer
places him- or herself outside musical time.
Nonetheless, the comparison between process music and conceptual visual
art is not totally successful. In LeWitt’s view, the concept is the most funda-
mental element of the artwork, with the actual implementation or craftsman-
ship being of secondary importance. In most process music however, the per-
formers’ musicianship is a crucial element in the communicative process of the
piece (Pendulum Music is an exception in that respect).
I Am Sitting in a Room occupies a special position in this comparison between
conceptual art and process music. Lucier’s concept is convincing in its own
right, to such an extent that even today artists are coming up with alternative

4 Besides the room’s own frequencies, the spatial positioning characteristics of the recording and the
playback equipment also play a role.
5 A good example of this is another famous feedback piece, Steve Reich’s Pendulum Music (1968). Three
performers are needed at the beginning of the piece to hold up microphones and then release them at
the same time. After that the microphones swing by themselves above the speakers and the performers’
task is finished.

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 Speaking and Singing in Different Rooms

performance practices and thinking up translations into other media.6 The

concept of I Am Sitting in a Room can be considered a discovery, a formula that
can be applied to different contexts. The strength of Lucier’s original version
lies in the wording of the concept that also forms the basic acoustic material
with which the concept is implemented. Lucier links semantics back to acous-
tics, thus creating an intriguing combination of layers—a feedback loop at a
second level. Moreover, the words are spoken by a voice, and this voice has per-
sonality. In Lucier’s case, it also has a very particular characteristic: his speech
defect forms an integral part of the piece’s rhythm and gives his words (and
especially the final sentence) a very human significance.
Despite the simplicity of the technological setting and the almost playful
method, Lucier manages to create a rich listening experience. Conceptual,
acoustic, and personal registers end up thoroughly intertwined. The sound
process unfolds slowly and regularly, and yet one can observe constantly shift-
ing interactions and complexities. In the following paragraphs, I will use a
chronology of the listening experience to look for musical principles that can
explain the successful structure of I Am Sitting in a Room.

a vo i c e W i th variations

Let us begin by examining a few acoustic characteristics in the initial phase

of I Am Sitting in a Room. Although the feedback process results in a very grad-
ual transformation, it happens in clearly audible steps. Each time the feedback
cycle is restarted, new resonances are added, and their overall characteristics
remain the same for the whole cycle. Hence it is not a gradually evolving pro-
cess, but a series of step-like changes in cycles (recordings) that can be distin-
guished, each lasting about a minute and a half. Successive cycles sound quite
similar to each other; the second cycle sounds almost identical to the first. And
yet each recording unmistakeably possesses its own acoustic identity or quality.
After several cycles, the introduction of the new identity is something the lis-
tener begins to look forward to. The slowness and regularity of the cycle thus
creates a strong pattern of expectation and gives the listener the time to listen
consciously to differences with previously heard versions.
The effect of the feedback loops corresponds to a universal principle of
musical variation. To give as generic a definition as possible, the principle
can be described as: “something is changing while simultaneously something
is staying the same.” The most important thing here is the “while.” Think of
the “theme with variations” in classical music: the melodic, harmonic, and/or
rhythmic structure of the music can be heard throughout the variations, how-
ever complex they become. Variations on a theme are experienced as changes
against a background of characteristics that remain stable and recognisable.

6 Some of the many examples that can be found on the web: Residuum, 2005. I am sitting in a room. http://
archive.org/details/residuum-i_am_sitting_in_a_room_mp3. Accessed on 12/09/2013; Kirkegaard,
Jacob: 4 Rooms, 2006. http://boomkat.com/cds/22750-jacob-kirkegaard-4-rooms. Accessed on
12/09/2013; [Laboratuar] performance, research and project lab, 2007. http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=W8Q-4adwVck. Accessed on 12/09/2013.

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 Paul Craenen

From a purely acoustic perspective, the only direct relationship in I Am Sitting

in a Room is between a recording being played back and the previous record-
ing. In that respect, it would be more accurate to speak of single variations or
transformations that, step by step, take the sound result further and further
away from the initial recording. But through this alone, it will already be clear
how strongly semantics and acoustics influence each other in the listening
experience. If we define the experience of thematic variation as an interaction
between stable and unstable elements, the words can be considered the stable
factor during the first recording cycles. After all, the voice continues to say the
same thing, whereas the audible change is located in the new resonance that
surrounds the voice in each new recording. “I am sitting in a room, different
from the one you are in now . . .” sounds different every time, but the mean-
ing of the words remains the same. Semantic intelligibility becomes a memory
aid for auditory memory, the thematic core that allows us to trace the acoustic
variations.

s e Ma nti c i ntellig ibility as a th e Matic c o re Fo r aco u stic

variation i n th e First c yc les

In the first iteration of Lucier’s voice, all our attention is turned to the message
it communicates. In the following cycles the voice is still clearly intelligible,
which turns the repetition of the same words, again and again, into a mantra
with a certain level of redundancy and slowness. This gives listeners the chance
to shift their attention from the meaning of the words to the character of the
voice, the phrasing, and the accumulating resonance.
After the initial phase, everything seems to speed up. The feedback reso-
nances start to become more and more independent, breaking free from the
spoken words. What was initially “acoustically” audible as a secondary param-
eter emancipates itself into a new phenomenon that nestles irresistibly in the
ear. It is as though a conflict were arising between Lucier’s voice and the room
in which he is sitting.

e M a nc i pati ng reso n an c es ( Fi Fth c yc le )

It is clear that this experience of heightened dynamics cannot be attributed

to an acceleration of the cycle or an external intervention by the composer in
the feedback process, but instead is caused by subjective and perceptual fac-
tors. As the feedback tones come into their own, they demand more and more
attention, and at the same time the intelligibility of the words is put under
pressure. Gradually we reach the threshold of the minimum information
needed to continue understanding the words in their own right. The listener
is challenged to fill in mentally what is missing on the basis of previous itera-
tions. The fading voice activates the listener’s memory and elicits involvement.
Someone who has not heard the first six cycles will be unable to understand
the voice as early as the seventh cycle of the original Lucier recording; how-
ever, a listener who has been following from the beginning will continue to be

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 Speaking and Singing in Different Rooms

able to hear the original words through the contours of rhythm, phrasing, and
dynamics.

loss oF s eM a nti c i ntelli gibility ( seven th c yc le )

This brings us back to the principle of musical variation we mentioned earlier.

Talking about a musical “theme with variations” is only relevant if a thematic
core is retained throughout the variations. Recognisability is gradually put to
the test in I Am Sitting in a Room. The stability we initially found in the semantics
and the voice is progressively undermined. Increasing complexity and even a
certain form of drama are the result. Lucier’s voice, on the point of being com-
pletely swallowed up by the resonances of the room, also confronts the listener
with a challenge to his or her own hearing. This is typical for Lucier’s work in
general: on the surface, it seems to be about acoustic phenomena investigated
with an almost scientific interest. But in the end it is primarily the act of listen-
ing that comes to the fore.
Once intelligibility is lost, developments seem to slow down again. It is as
if the conflict between two modes of perception has been resolved and a new
stability can be heard. The room’s own frequencies have now forced their way
to the forefront. By definition, these inherent frequencies stay the same (since
the room in which the recordings are made stays the same), leading to a clearly
audible relationship between, let’s say, the eighth and seventeenth cycles in
terms of the frequencies present and the pitches that can be heard.

a udi ble r elati o ns h i ps bet Ween c yc les based o n

the i nh er ent F r eQ uenc i es o F th e ro oM ( eig h th an d
s eventeenth c yc les )

An important reversal has occurred. Each cycle continues to generate new reso-
nances that can be experienced as sound variations, but the stable core around
which they crystallise is no longer the voice or the words that could be heard in
the first recording. In the first recording the characteristics of the room were
hardly present at all, whereas the voice was absolutely central. In the course of
the feedback process, this relationship is reversed step by step. The new rela-
tionship indicates something that grows, a tonality of the room that manifests
itself ever more prominently. Hence we can no longer speak of variations that
refer back to a shared sound pattern in the past, but to the audible emergence
of a future that had already been announced in the semantic sense, but was not
yet borne out by acoustic reality at the beginning of the piece.

F r oM s pea Ki ng to s i ngi ng

In the final phase of I Am Sitting in a Room, the voice has been completely erased
and all the silences between what once were words have been filled with spatial
resonances. Now attention can be devoted fully to the play of feedback tones,
the way they alternate with one another and how in each new recording they

277
 Paul Craenen

shift, stretch, or intensify a little, or sometimes even make way for a new note.
Only the rhythm and dynamics still vaguely remind us of the original phrasing
of the voice.

F eedbac K play ( eig h teen th c yc le )

It is only when we look back over our shoulder that it becomes clear what rad-
ical events have played out. The gradual nature of the feedback process means
that each new recording can be heard as merely a minor variation on the one
before. With each recording something is added, but much has also been lost
along the way, almost without our noticing. The first loss was the articulation of
the words, then the timbre of the voice, then the recognisability of the words,
then the phrasing, until finally a sound situation was reached in which even the
human origin of the sound has evaporated. However it is not so clear where, as
listeners, we lost all these qualities. We do not remember any ruptures because
our attention was always attracted by new details and, moreover, our memory
was trying to fill in the gaps the whole time.
I am Sitting in a Room demonstrates how experience with variations and rela-
tionships is based on quantifiable acoustic or musical information and also
constantly engages the listener’s memory and consciousness. The stable, rec-
ognisable core around which variations can crystallise may be of an acoustic
nature, it may be the meaning of a word, or it may be something even more
abstract, something that could be described as a “concept” that does not corre-
spond to (acoustic) reality. This conceptual origin gives the listener an awareness
that turns out to be crucial to his or her listening experience and appreciation.
Somewhere in the listening process, the listener loses language in its concrete,
sounding form. He or she is caught up in a singing, resonating soundscape,
all the while not entirely forgetting what is going on. For what also convinces
us, step by step, when listening to I Am Sitting in a Room, is the success of the
concept. As acoustic sensation, semantic frame of reference, and conceptual
awareness affect one another more and more deeply, the listener’s “under-
standing” ultimately becomes a triumph of the imagination.
There is a timeless, archaic theme concealed within this work, a theme that
is not about acoustics but rather is about the metamorphosis of the voice. A
speaking, stuttering voice emerges from the chrysalis of the piece as a voice
that sings and resonates. This voice is not electronic and neither is it a second-
ary characteristic of something (the room) or someone (Alvin Lucier). It is a
voice of its own, a voice full of life directed towards a future, growing identity.
This is what makes the listener listen, and continue to listen to what is yet to
come.

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 Speaking and Singing in Different Rooms

References
Lewitt, Sol. (1967) 2002. “Paragraphs on Reich, Steve. (1968) 2002. “Music as a
Conceptual Art.” in Art in Theory, 1900- Gradual Process.” In Writings on Music,
2000, edited by Charles Harrison and 1965–2000, edited by Paul Hillier, 34–36.
Paul Wood, 846–49. Oxford: Blackwell New York: Oxford University Press. First
Publishing. First published in Artforum 5 published in Anti-Illusion: Procedures/
(10): 79–83. Materials by James K. Monte and Marcia
Tucker (New York: Whitney Museum of
American Art).

279
 Experiment in Practice
Catherine Laws
University of York; Orpheus Research Centre in Music

What might it mean to practise a composition experimentally: to approach

it with an experimental mindset? This question has arisen through my ongo-
ing experience of working with the piano music of Morton Feldman, one that
has caused me to consider the specific impact of practising his compositions
upon my approach to performance more generally. While I have for some
years given occasional performances of Feldman’s music, this article arises
out of a more focused scrutiny of the experience of performing his late piano
works. Performances took place in 2009-2010 across the UK (in London, Bath,
Dartington, Barnstaple, Oxford and York) and in Ghent, forming part of the
process of research for a project at the Orpheus Research Centre in Music enti-
tled “The modes of listening, memory, and physicality at play in the prepara-
tion and performance of Morton Feldman’s later works for solo piano.”
In this instance, the focus is Feldman’s last piano piece, Palais de Mari (1986).
The title of this piece is taken from a photograph of an ancient ruined palace
in Syria that Feldman saw in the Louvre Museum. However, the direct impetus
for the piece came from Feldman’s composition student Bunita Marcus, who
asked him to condense the material and techniques from his longer pieces into
a smaller work.
As in Feldman’s other piano music, there is little here in the way of conven-
tional technical difficulty. Similarly to Triadic Memories (1981) and For Bunita
Marcus (1985), there are occasional awkward leaps across wide intervals—here
mostly for tiny grace notes, always placed well over an octave above the chords
that precede and follow; these require conventional practice. Some of the
rhythmic changes also require a little attention, so as not to be wrong-footed by
the sudden shifts between bar lengths. However, even in this respect the piece
is relatively simple, with none of the more complex or irrational rhythmic rela-
tionships found elsewhere in Feldman’s work. Additionally, on the surface level
at least, Feldman’s notational practice appears to leave little room for interpre-
tative exploration on the part of the pianist. He gives single metronome and
dynamic markings that remain unchanged for the duration of the piece, and
indicates the (very few) points at which the sustaining pedal should be raised
and lowered to clear the resonance. The specificity of his metrical and rhyth-
mical shifts—sometimes altering the length of an otherwise repeated note,
chord, or whole bar only fractionally—are such that any durational freedom
on the part of the performer will obscure these subtle but important changes
(though in practice the differences in performances are nevertheless consid-

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 Catherine Laws

erable, as is evidenced by comparison of recordings;1 the more concentrated

and closely defined the soundworld, the more noticeable and significant the
tiniest inflections of rhythm or resonance). Instead, the primary focus of tech-
nical practice tends to be upon maintaining the soft dynamic across chords of
varying shapes and densities, on touch, tone, and the weighting of chords, on
the subtleties of key release at this quiet level, and on how to phrase the short
melodic fragments.
Overall, the challenge of Feldman’s music for the performer lies primarily
in the attention to details of touch, tone, and resonance. Much of Feldman’s
music operates within a very narrow, extremely soft dynamic range, often at the
borders of what is possible in terms of quiet piano sound, and sometimes over
very long periods of time; Palais de Mari is actually one of Feldman’s shorter
late works, but still lasts around twenty-five minutes without a break. Triadic
Memories runs for about 90 minutes, For Bunita Marcus a little less (although
these are by no means Feldman’s longest works: String Quartet II from 1983 lasts
for around five hours).
In Piano Notes, Charles Rosen ([2002] 2004, 45, 50) points out that most
composers assume a uniformity of tone colour across the piano, when in real-
ity even the most well-balanced piano has very different colours in the lowest
and highest regions. There are exceptions—Debussy, for example—but Rosen
argues that register and tone colour are generally subservient to the expressive
narrative, to form and structure, and that the specific differential qualities of
sounds, in and of themselves, often pass unnoticed. In particular, that these
changes are gradual across the range often obscures the significant variation.
In contrast, Feldman’s compositional choices in his late piano music reveal
a particular sensitivity to this issue, especially in relation to the decay of the
sound. He liked to compose at the piano, often with his head very close to the
instrument, listening carefully to the decay (Bryars and Tilson Thomas 2013);
he said that sound as a physical fact kept him from floating off into an “intel-
lectual daydream,” guarding against an abstract compositional idea of how the
piece would sound, at some remove from the acoustical reality (Feldman 2000,
206). As a result, the pianist must, perhaps more than ever, scrutinise the qual-
ity of the sound she or he produces, alert to the most subtle relative qualities of
sound across considerable lengths of time.
The process of practising and performing Feldman’s music throws into stark
relief issues that lie at the heart of piano playing, but which often become sub-
merged, elsewhere in the piano repertoire, beneath other concerns. Pianists
do, of course, focus in their training on details of finger and pedal technique,
and on how these influence the quality of sound production. However, the
virtuosity of much solo piano music in the Western classical tradition can dis-
tract attention from qualities of sound towards the fundamental issue of get-

1 Unlike much of Feldman’s work, Palais de Mari has been recorded many times. Recordings include
those by well-known Feldman performers such as Aki Takahashi, John Tilbury, Markus Hinterhäuser,
Stéphane Ginsburgh, and Marianne Schroeder (who made the first recording), in addition to those
by Alan Feinberg, Siegfried Mauser, Ronnie Lynn Patterson, Steffen Schleiermacher, Sabine Liebner,
Philip Howard, Andreas Mühlen, and others.

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 Experiment in Practice

ting around the notes. Moreover, the instrument’s very versatility, in terms of
its melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic capabilities, combined with the pre-em-
inence of the idea of musical form as a logical continuity articulated primar-
ily through these parameters, often leads pianists to concentrate expressive
intentions towards form and structure at the expense of sonority, timbre, and
texture.2 In contrast, I argue, Feldman’s music encourages the pianist to con-
front the connection between resonance and the perception of form. As such,
practising this music is always, self-consciously, part of a process of inquiry that
tests the relationship between sounds across time.
Feldman’s move to composing longer and longer pieces was driven by his
sense that musical form had become a “paraphrase of memory” (Feldman 1985:
127); that organic antecedent-consequent structures of any kind resulted in
a focus on expectations (and their denial) and on the recognition of return-
ing (while often transformed) materials: that is to say, on processes of mem-
ory, rather than on musical sound. By extending his works beyond the usual,
assimilable length, he hoped to move listeners beyond any initial expectations
that the quiet, uneventful music was bound to grow into something else, and
towards a different kind of listening, concentrating attention on the local pat-
terning and resonance of the musical fabric.
This is not, however, a denial of memory, but rather a refocusing on the ambi-
guities and uncertainties of memory when it operates outside conventional or
received structures. Feldman talked of “formalising a disorientation of mem-
ory” (Feldman 1985: 127). Palais de Mari comprises small modules of material:
sometimes short blocks of one or just a few bars, interrupted by rest bars of
different lengths—anything from 3/16 to 2/2; figure 1 shows the opening of the
piece. Importantly, the pedal stays down through the “rests,” focusing atten-
tion on the decay of the sound. Other sections comprise extended passages
of long chords that are then repeated but transposed slightly (by a semitone,
for example) and with the length of each chord in the set extended or short-
ened by a quaver or a crotchet (as in figure 2). Feldman described this piece as
a “rondo of everything” (Feldman 2008, 2:594), stating that “everything comes
back.” Unsurprisingly, though, it is only a rondo in the loosest sense; modules,
or elements of them, return, but almost always in altered form and without any
clear sense of consolidated reiteration. Repetition here always reveals differ-
ence, the subtle changes undermining the sense of identity. This produces an
impression of the relatedness of events, without any clear implication of cau-
sality or unity.

2 Pianist Philip Howard (2010), who has recorded Feldman’s Palais de Mari, puts it more bluntly, stating
that in most music, “people have enough to occupy their thoughts and fail to notice the importance of
resonance and decay. . . . but when it gets sparser they start having to think about it suddenly.”

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 Catherine Laws

Fig. 1

Sometimes the relationships between musical events are obvious. Certain

chords or modules are echoed by means of techniques of “almost” repetition;
for example, with some pitches reordered rhythmically, or with pitch classes dis-
placed across octaves so that the tone and the decay of the sound are somewhat
different, or with exactly the same short chordal sequences simply extended
or compressed durationally. Less obvious, but perceptible to varying extents,
are other kinds of relationships. Feldman makes use of inversions or transpo-
sitions of chords or melodic fragments, but often with the rhythmic relation-
ships retained. Similarly, he sometimes uses only very distantly related chords
but employs them within repeated gestures of the same, striking quality (for
example by alternating them with single grace notes very high on the piano).
Finally, metre is itself subject to comparable forms of variation, with frequent
repetition of the same time signatures (especially 5/8, 3/4, and 2/2) but with
the content similar but varied and the bars subdivided in several different ways.
The result is a general sense of relationships between the musical modules, but
at subtly shifting levels and with varying degrees of ambiguity, such that they
never quite crystallise into anything graspable. Frank Sani reaches a similar
conclusion after a thorough analysis of all the possible relationships perceiv-
able from the score; he identifies a complex web of interconnections, some

284

Figure 1. Morton Feldman, Palais de Mari (1986), bars 1-27.

Copyright 1986 by Universal Edition (London) Ltd., London/ UE30238. Reproduced by permission.
 Experiment in Practice

Fig. 2

immediately apparent to the ear and others not, but concludes that there is
no core group class providing underlying cohesion: “Palais de Mari shows a
catalogue of playful workmanship, making through-composing into a highly
skilled flow of invention, where groups of pitches are inverted, transposed,
re-shaped, and where the introduction of new pitches from time to time is
instinctively alternated with echoes of previous harmonies” (Sani 2004). On
the one hand these modules act almost as images—their focus and brevity
makes them discrete and potentially memorable in themselves—but the end-
less, subtle reconfigurations cause the memory to start to slip. Perhaps a sense
of a relation is retained, but exactly what to? and exactly what has changed? In
this way, seemingly objective, systemised relationships are undermined by intu-
itive and unpredictable interventions. Feldman commented, “what I’m doing
is exploring what I feel [are] the discrete possibilities of making connections,
which sometimes my brain or ears can’t make” (Feldman 2008, 2:710); the word
“possibilities” seems key here: the relationships are as much potential as real,
manifested as much by the performer and listener’s perception of a possible
connection as by any definable, material relationship.
In performance terms, the relative uncertainty or stability of these relation-
ships will of course be partly defined by the pianist’s performance decisions,

285

Figure 2. Morton Feldman, Palais de Mari (1986), bars 342-368.

Copyright 1986 by Universal Edition (London) Ltd., London/ UE30238. Reproduced by
permission.
 Catherine Laws

developed through practice. To an extent the pianist will explore and come to
decisions about touch, tone, weighting of chords, relative stress of notes, exact
tempo, and what ppp really means; all this will affect how the performer pro-
duces the effect of one sound listening to another internally, across the fabric
of the work. On this level, the process of practice is little different from that for
any other music, combining technical and embodied factors into developing a
sense of how to project the musical continuity; to an extent, the pianist forms
an interpretation through the practical experience of working on the music.
However, a range of factors militates against the conventional notion of inter-
pretation since there is no clear structure or expressive trajectory to represent.
This leads to a significant shift in the aims and objectives of practice.
With Palais de Mari, in hearing the subtleties of the relationships exposed by
the material reality of piano resonance, one quickly comes to realise that the
ambiguities of the music and instabilities of the resonances are such that one
hears different connections each time; the performer and listener constantly
form and re-form associations out of the soundworld, recreating the musical
meaning anew, subjectively, each time. If the music maps a subtly shifting ter-
rain, to attempt to draw a clear line across it by foregrounding certain rela-
tionships is to impose a coherence of experience on something that otherwise
hovers on the boundaries of tangibility. In this respect, practice cannot, with
this music, consist of finding an expressive pathway to be projected in per-
formance. Instead, the repeated playing of the music gradually accumulates
awareness of the ways in which the music not only resists concretisation but is
in part “about” its own undecidability, its own contingency and performativity:
“about” the direct experience of sound in the moment of its perception. In this
sense, practice allows for a growing understanding and acceptance of the con-
dition of uncertainty, and of the ability to attend and react to ever-changing
qualities of sound.
Significantly, the pianist’s understanding of the musical relationships is, in
part, dictated by factors only discerned in the moment of performance. Pianists
always, of course, grapple with the fact that they can never take their instru-
ments with them. Piano performance is always an experimental business. We
have to adapt our techniques in relation to the instrument (and the acoustic).
We use any available practice time to get to know the piano, but often this time
is limited, and only the most well-established and venerated performers—usu-
ally of more mainstream classical repertoire—are able to demand the instru-
ment of their choice for a performance, or to work with piano technicians to
rebalance the keyboard according to their preferences.
These issues are faced by any pianist playing any repertoire, but the par-
ticularities of Feldman’s musical material make them especially significant.
Aside from the substantial influence of the size and acoustics of the space in
which one is performing, the nature of piano sound at very low dynamics var-
ies between instruments, as does the decay. The particular weight and balance
of each keyboard is different, and often there is considerable variation across
the range; some of this might only be fully realised in the moment of perfor-
mance. In contrast to the issue of decay, in Palais de Mari the more continuous

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sequences of chords have the effect of building the sound slightly—with the
pedal held throughout long passages, some harmonics continue to reverberate
despite the soft dynamic level. Even as these die, the resonance can sometimes
be reactivated by the relationship to overtones of subsequent chords, but the
exact nature of this resonance will vary from one piano to another (especially in
relation to how, and how well, the piano is tuned). All these things will influence
how we hear the almost-patterns of Feldman’s music, and these elements are
not—cannot be—represented in the score: they are appreciable only through
playing and/or listening. While in most music these subtleties are peripheral,
subtly inflecting the harmonic resonance but without material implications for
form, structure, or overall expression, here the fragility of the soundworld and
the ambiguities of the musical connectivity are in part derived from the very
nature of these resonances.
As a result, the pianist John Tilbury stresses, the performer is never entirely
in charge of the sound: “you play a chord and you can sustain it, by means of
the pedal, and then it’s really out of your control. You can kill it, by lifting the
pedal, but the very complex way that it disintegrates and changes—you have no
control over that whatsoever” (Gardner 2006). Moreover, it is these variations
and unpredictabilities in the ways in which the sound aggregates and disperses
that, in part, interest Feldman. The performer is still responsible for the sound,
but in this context there is no possibility of subjugating the subtle idiosyn-
crasies of the instrument to the sense of the musical argument or discourse.
Here, there can be no distinction between the two. Exactly what constitutes
the here is completely bound up with the material manifestation of the sound,
and hence with the performer’s touch. The way in which a particular note or
combination of notes sounds in the moment of performance must influence
subsequent approaches to other notes. Moreover, the performer’s action-per-
ception loop is somewhat altered. In most music, the pianist plays a note or
chord, listens to the immediate qualities of that attack (often unconsciously, as
part of an embodied process), and prepares for the next, with the actions subtly
influenced by the perception of what is heard. However, in Palais de Mari (and
much of Feldman’s other late music), the “rest” bars, in which the resonances
decay, are not merely spaces between sound events (or in which the performer
can prepare the next action) but are materially significant in themselves. How
the resonance decays, and how certain overtones fade from prominence and
are then reactivated, is of as much interest as the tones activated by the pianist’s
fingers. Feldman seems to pose the question, what is the musical material: the
notes struck by the pianist, or the sympathetic frequencies that rise out of, and
fall back into, the bloom of the resonant texture? For the pianist, this question
alters the nature of her or his listening and the relationship between action and
perception.
The delicacy of the soundworld poses particular difficulties. Pianists practise
pianissimo technique, but the minutiae of the differences in key and hammer
action mean that the technique has to be subtly adjusted for different pianos,
and across the range. Practising on different instruments can lead one towards
deciding on an approach, but not on an absolute level of sound or on exact-

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 Catherine Laws

itude of touch. The performer has to decide how soft is soft: does ppp mean
absolutely as soft as possible, on the borders of audibility and with the risk that
notes may not always sound, or is a degree of projection necessary, allowing for
evenness of tone and the clear definition of musical events? This is, of course,
a question that pianists (and other musical performers) confront all the time.
The choices relate to one’s attitude towards the situation of performance; a
preference for the clarity and uniformity necessary to fully discern the subtle
almost-patterns of the musical fabric must be set against the desire, not merely
to project, but truly to perform the fact that music is, in part, concerned with
exploring the fragility and contingency of instrumental sound. Either way, one
reaches a paradox: practice, however important, cannot prepare one for the
particular uncertainties of the moment of performing this music and for the
need to be alive to the qualities of sound at every instance, but it is only through
orienting one’s practice towards those problems that one truly understand the
nature of this issue—the specifics of those contingencies, and the questions of
performativity that Feldman exposes.
Certainly, whatever the pianist’s decision, the quality of any one chord or
short phrase has implications for our sense of the already uncertain nature of
its relationship to another; the subtleties of the relationships, because of their
fragility, will vary according to the performer’s understanding and decisions,
but some of these have to be taken in the moment. Kathleen Coessens argues
that in any performance the qualities of a musical gesture, physical and sonic,
influence in the moment how the next gesture is created (Coessens 2009, 276–
77). This is true, but these pieces by Feldman push this to the forefront and
make it pre-eminent in the formation of musical meaning—they throw into
relief the manifestation of kairos (in Coessens’s terms) as the taking of a pro-
pitious decision in the moment of the particular situation. I would argue that
the need for the pianist to listen attentively and react to sound in the moment
is more extreme than in the performance of most other music. Again, prac-
tice cannot lead to decisions as to how exactly to play, rather it leads towards
a greater understanding of the resonant variation and consequent relational
potential of Feldman’s music, and a better ability to play according to what one
hears, rather than according to what one expects or plans to hear.
The performer’s treatment of metre and rhythm is also immensely signif-
icant, again in relation to the perception of pattern, both locally and across
time. Despite Feldman’s specificity with regard to tempo and duration, in
practice there are inevitable differences between performances, and even the
tiniest variations of either tempo or rhythm affect the emphasis—hence the
very subtle similarities and differences that Feldman employs. Again, this is
immediately apparent in comparing even the opening few bars of any of the
recordings, in which the impact of the smallest differences in tempi, phrasing,
and weighting lead to significantly different effects. As Dirk Moelants (2001,
127–28) has shown in a study of Feldman’s much earlier and very different Last
Pieces for piano, performance decisions about the lengths of notes have a signif-
icant influence upon the role of memory in the music—on our ability to make
connections between sounds. In this later music, Feldman is often playing with

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exactly this ability, and the performer’s decisions as to the relationship between
ictus, rhythm, and metre have a profound impact on sound and memory.
Again, some of these decisions can be taken in the usual manner, through
the practice process, and might be described in conventional interpretative
terms. However, the durational decisions are always linked to harmonic rever-
beration, and are therefore also subject to the contingencies of the moment
of performance I have been discussing. Moreover, this relationship produces a
peculiar duality for the performer. As explained above, the significance of res-
onance and decay requires attention and is different on each piano; while the
duration between events is determined by Feldman, the precise detail of what
we hear in that period is not. In this sense, the effect is of time being marked by
the decay—slowly and continuously, but at a slightly different rate and with a
slightly different quality in each performance. At the same time, the ictus ticks
away, marking time in short, evenly measured periods, oblivious of the uncer-
tainties of the musical content. However, I would argue that this is one of the
productive dilemmas produced by Feldman’s music: the awareness of meas-
ured time set against experiential time, and the impossibility of resolving that
duality. The performer has to experience this “betweenness” without resolving
the contradiction; again, this means practising the experience of uncertainty,
cultivating an openness to being pulled sometimes more in one direction,
sometimes more in the other, and responding according to the subtleties of
the sound in the moment.
Ultimately, while Feldman is generally considered an experimental composer,
I am arguing for the practice of practising as an experimental process, defined
in Cage’s (1955, 13) terms (and later elaborated by Michael Nyman [1999, 1–30])
as oriented towards situations with unknown outcomes. In this sense, the aim
of practice is not to pin things down—deciding how exactly to place a note,
weight a chord, or develop a “reading” or interpretation of a work—but rather
to hone the ability to respond to the contingencies of sound in the moment of
performance. This is not to dismiss the importance of technique—as should be
clear from the above, the ability to respond appropriately is predicated upon a
sound technical basis, especially with respect to touch and tone—but rather
to recapture the ultimate aim of practice as leading towards an openness to
what cannot be planned, to the undecidability of performance. In this respect,
practising Feldman’s music, and carrying forward the experimental practice it
inspires, might alter one’s ability truly to listen to the sounds of other music,
and to attend to the ways in which these, too, are manifested in the moment of
performance.

References
Bryars, Gavin, and Michael Tilson Thomas. Cage, John. 1955. “Experimental Music:
2013. “Feldman at the Piano.” Chris Doctrine.” In Silence: Lectures and Writings,
Villars Homepage, Morton Feldman 1961, 13–17. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan
Page. Accessed 24 April. http://www. University Press.
cnvill.net/mfatpiano.htm.

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Coessens, Kathleen. 2009. “Musical Howard, Philip. 2010. Email to the author.
Performance and ‘Kairos’: Exploring the 17 March.
Time and Space of Artistic Resonance.” Moelants, Dirk. 2001. “What is Slow?
International Review of the Aesthetics and Timing Strategies in the Performance of
Sociology of Music 40 (2): 269–81. Feldman’s Last Pieces.” In Proceedings of the
Feldman, Morton. 1985. Essays, edited by VII International Symposium on Systematic
Walter Zimmermann. Kerpen: Beginner and Comparative Musicology, III International
Press. Conference on Cognitive Musicology, edited
———. 2000. Give My Regards to Eighth by Henna Lappalainen, 121–28. Jyväskylä:
Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman, University of Jyväskylä.
edited by B. H. Friedman. Cambridge, Nyman, Michael. 1999. Experimental Music:
MA: Exact Change. Cage and Beyond. 2nd ed. Cambridge:
———. 2008. Morton Feldman in Middelburg: Cambridge University Press.
Words on Music—Lectures and Conversations, Rosen, Charles. (2002) 2004. Piano Notes:
edited by Raoul Mörchen. 2 vols. The Hidden World of the Pianist. London:
Cologne: MusikTexte. Penguin.
Gardner, James. 2006. “Interview with John Sani, Frank. 2004. “Morton Feldman’s Palais
Tilbury.” Chris Villars Homepage, Morton de Mari: A Pitch Analysis.” Chris Villars
Feldman Page. Accessed 24 April 2013. Homepage, Morton Feldman Page.
http://www.cnvill.net/mfgardner.htm. Accessed 24 April 2013. http://www.cnvill.
net/mfsani3/mfsani3.htm.

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 The Virtual Haydn:
An Experiment in Recording,
Performing, and Publishing

Tom Beghin
McGill University, Montreal

Between 2005 and 2009, at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music
Media and Technology (CIRMMT, McGill University, Montreal), producer
Martha de Francisco, engineer Wieslaw Woszczyk, and I collaborated to apply
“virtual acoustics” to a complete recording of Joseph Haydn’s solo keyboard
works. The Virtual Haydn is at present available on both Blu-ray (Beghin 2009)
and CD/DVD (Beghin 2011). Seven historical keyboards—each representative
of a part of the repertoire—combine with nine virtually recreated historical
rooms—locations where Haydn’s keyboard music would have been performed.
The published package contains fifteen hours of high-resolution sound (5.0
surround and 2.0 stereo, separately mixed) and three hours of HD-video,
including a feature-length “making of ” documentary entitled Playing the Room
(Litz and Tusz, 2009).
The Virtual Haydn is based on two major premises. First, we abrogate the
principle of “one piano fits all,” replacing a single Steinway by a variety of his-
torical keyboards, newly constructed to meet the highest possible standards.
Second, we do the same with “the single concert hall,” replacing one type of
acoustic space—usually designed to “project” the music to “the audience”
out there—with a variety of rooms that may historically not even have been
exclusively devoted to playing or listening to music, such as ceremonial halls,
salons, or a composer’s study. As a result, the notion of one consistent “reper-
toire” yields to “several” alternative and/or complementary “sub-repertoires.”
Instead of a continuum from “early” to “late” (the typical evolutionistic, if not
teleological view of a composer’s oeuvre: think Beethoven piano sonatas), we
like to believe that, with The Virtual Haydn, we have opened various windows
onto mid to late eighteenth-century “musicking.”1 Together, these windows
span the years between ca. 1750, when Haydn as a young adult started freelanc-
ing in Vienna, and 1797, the date of his hymn “Gott, erhalte Franz den Kaiser,”
on which he wrote variations. The latter piece, technically an arrangement for

1 To replace the noun “music,” we adopt this more dynamic term from Christopher Small (1998).

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 Tom Beghin

piano of a movement from his “Emperor” String Quartet, Hob. III:77 (or op.
76, no. 3), serves as a reminder that, in Haydn’s day, the genre of “keyboard
music” was more inclusive than what we’ve become used to since Anthony van
Hoboken’s catalogue (1957–78). “Keyboard music” would have included “songs
for the keyboard” (Lieder fürs Clavier) or “accompanied sonatas” (what we now
call “trios” or the occasional “violin sonata”). When we add the qualifier “solo”
to our assignment—to record Haydn’s complete solo keyboard music (or “Hob.
XVI,” sonatas, and “Hob. XVII,” single pieces)—this should similarly be under-
stood as pragmatic rather than ideological.
The “virtual” in our title aims to capture more than just an innovative use of
technology. It hints at a desire, as engineer, producer, or performer, to play and
not only copy or reconstruct. For me, as performer, this meant to be historically
imaginative. In the forthcoming monograph Haydn at the Keyboard: A Performer’s
Paradox, I elucidate my musicological journey, in which “virtual acoustics”
became more than a finishing touch: the “paradox,” an analogy to Diderot’s
“Paradoxe sur le comédien” (Diderot [1830] 1995),2 refers to the various, often
conflicting personae that as a twenty-first century performer “I” have to adopt
vis-à-vis Haydn and the erstwhile users of his sonatas, represented by their
mostly female dedicatees. In this essay, I focus more on the concrete decisions
that eventually defined the commercially released product.

b lu - r ay
The Blu-ray package includes four discs, as opposed to the thirteen in the CD/
DVD release. This menu page gives an immediate overview of about four hours
of music in five-channel high-resolution surround and two-channel high-res-
olution stereo. The contents of this single disc correspond to three different
opus sets, containing six sonatas each, published or circulated in 1774, 1776,
and 1780 respectively. With our remote control we have selected and high-
lighted the third of these: the “Auenbrugger” Sonatas, dedicated to the sisters
Katharina and Marianna (von) Auenbrugger. The concept of an opus—say,
three symphonies, six sonatas, or twelve songs—was strong in eighteenth-cen-
tury musical life. This was true not only for publishing but also for performance:
in a 1784 advertisement the Viennese publisher Johann Traeg announced that,
from his “nice stock of the best and newest scores,” he would make available to
subscribers “either three symphonies or six quintets, six quartets, six trios, etc.”
at a blanket rental fee per season. The clientele he had in mind were “those
families and individuals . . . who entertain themselves every week with . . . acad-
emies [Akademien, i.e., concerts]” (Sisman 2008, 86). Mozart “frequently” per-
formed “all his six” Munich sonatas (K. 279–84) at private houses in various
German cities. “Six” was not only a perfect number—it may well have encapsu-
lated the typical attention span for a listener at that time.

2 Written in the early 1770s, the piece was published posthumously. The essay deals with “sincerity” and
the question of an actor’s emotional investment in his or her role.

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 The Virtual Haydn

Before we found the Blu-ray format, we seriously struggled with the dilemma
of either having to give up the option of fitting a complete opus on a 72-minute
compact disc, thus continuing to favour (as modern practice wants it) single
works, or having to compromise on taking repeats (to speed things up). But
taking repeats, following eighteenth-century practice, allows the skilled per-
former to improvise over the written text—a skill I was keen to demonstrate
also on the recording. Blu-ray, in both cases, provided a welcome solution.

v i r tua l ac ous ti c s : per ex eM plu M

16 September 2007, 1:00 p.m., I board the ferry in Calais, bound for Dover.
Fragments of a letter of 8 January 1791 from Haydn to his dear friend Marianne
von Genzinger keep invading my thoughts:

After attending Holy Mass, I boarded the ship, at 7:30 a.m. [on New Year’s Day 1791],
and at 5 p.m., God be thanked!, I arrived safe and sound in Dover. . . . During the
entire passage I stayed on deck, so as to gaze my fill at that mighty animal, the sea.
As long as there was no wind, I wasn’t afraid, but as the wind grew stronger and
stronger, and I saw those frighteningly high waves slamming into the ship, a little
fear took hold of me, along with a little nausea. But I survived it all without . . . you
know, and arrived safely to shore. (Bartha 1965, 250, my translation)

Like Haydn, for most of the one-and-a-half-hour journey, I too stayed on deck.
The purpose of the trip: to bring a 1798 Longman, Clementi & Co. piano from
its present home in Belgium back to England, specifically to Oxford’s Holywell
Music Room, “Europe’s oldest concert hall.” Our task: to sample the room—
that is, to take many acoustical snapshots of it—and make a reference record-
ing of the instrument, positioned in recital-style, on the stage with its lid up.
The piece I played was Haydn’s “grand” Sonata in E♭ Major, Hob. XVI:52, writ-
ten for the London-based, professionally trained pianist Theresa Jansen, pupil
of the “Father of the [modern] Piano,” Muzio Clementi. To further transport
myself into an appropriate concert mood, I invited a few British guests, seated
at an appropriate distance on built-in benches.
With this information—digital data on our hard drives as well as vivid mem-
ories of the actual performance experience—our team flew back home to
Montreal, Canada. There, in a laboratory on the eighth floor of a downtown
building, we replicated everything. Thus, sitting at a 2004 replica of the same
Longman, Clementi & Co. grand, in a three-dimensional “dome” of twen-
ty-four loudspeakers, I can play as if I were in the Holywell Music Room, ever so
conscious of the acoustical spaciousness that surrounds me. As microphones
pick up the sounds of the piano, the computer makes the fastest of calcula-
tions, sending reverberation responses identical to those in Oxford through
the loudspeakers. With the confidence expected of a recitalist, I project those
grand opening chords into a virtual hall. Then, as I play the repetitions in the
higher register, dropping silences in between, I actively engage with the acous-
tical feedback, which complements the lazily dampened, resonant though

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 Tom Beghin

somewhat muffled English tones amazingly well. Through these moments of

“staged” hesitation, I assert my authority as a professional performer, at the
English instrument, in a virtual concert space, with an imaginary audience.3

M aKi ng dec isio n s 1: in stru Men ts

When Wieslaw Woszczyk approached me with the idea of “virtual acoustics,” I

was initially hesitant. My focus had been on Haydn, his dedicatees, and their
instruments. Now also their rooms? What about their clothes, also relevant
for a specific composure at the keyboard? Candles? (For reading a score.)
Humidity? (For tuning.) Suddenly, all the many traps of historical reconstruc-
tion felt wide open. We want to be inspired rather than enslaved by history. We
want to breathe life into scores, not because we feel a moral obligation to the
past, but because we want them to speak to open-minded twenty-first-century
audiences, making full use of present-day expertise and technology. I had no
antiquarian desire to record on various “authentic” instruments in museums.
The newly built instruments are simply much better and much more reliable—
just as the old ones were in their own time. Why chase nostalgia?
My interest in instruments and Woszczyk’s in rooms, however, quickly proved
complementary. Woszczyk was interested in a variety of rooms, not privileging
one over another, but in allowing each to highlight a different aspect of the
music. So, the anxiety shifted from the “whether” to the “what”: what rooms
should we select for a repertoire that almost exclusively would have revolved
around private music making? (In this respect, the previous example of a “con-
cert sonata” would have been one of two big exceptions for Haydn.) Even
granted that we know which room we’d like, and even if it still exists, how
“authentic” is its present state? And on the instrument side, there was a new,
pressing challenge. I had always assumed that I would go elsewhere to record,
to wherever I would find the appropriate instrument. With this new dimension,
we had to bring instruments to Montreal—paradoxically making the “virtual”
much more logistically complex than the “real.” With the help of funding from
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), we
rose to the occasion, and expanded our collection of Haydn-related keyboards
to the following encompassing list:

1. Viennese harpsichord, Johann Leydecker, Vienna, 1755, by Martin Pühringer,

Haslach, 2005
The first modern-day replica of a mid-eighteenth century Viennese harpsi-
chord, this instrument features the so-called Viennese “short octave” or “mul-
tiple-broken bass octave”: a number of keys in the bass are cut in two, one even
in three, to accommodate more notes in a shorter span. Three of Haydn’s solo
keyboard pieces can be played only on an instrument with such a short octave;
the opening movement of the Sonata in E Minor, Hob. XVI:47, is an example.
For the second dominant chord (an intensification of the first two-bar gesture),

3 For technical details, see Woszczyk (2009); Litz and Tusz (2009).

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I play a D, d (one octave higher), and f♯ (one tenth higher), all within the com-
fort of one hand.

2. Saxon clavichord, ca. 1760, by Joris Potvlieghe, Tollembeek, 2003

The expressive-dramatic power of this big, Saxon-style clavichord lends itself
well to what have been called Haydn’s “workshop sonatas,” of which the C
Minor Sonata Hob. XVI:20 is the most famous (Somfai 1995, 173–74). By default,
because of its “long octave” (i.e., chromatic), I chose the clavichord for those
pieces up to the early 1770s that cannot be played with a short octave.
From these organological variables, decisions started revealing themselves.
For example, the last movement of the Sonata in A♭ Major, Hob. XVI:46 con-
tains a strange jump in the bass to avoid a low E♭. But when we look closer at
the constellation of the Viennese short octave, we see that there is no bass E♭
or D♯. The left hand must jump, however nonsensical the result on the score.
Thus, I play the piece on the 1755 Leydecker.

3. French-style, double manual harpsichord, ca. 1770, by Yves Beaupré,

Montreal, 2007
Viennese harpsichords had only one manual, with two eight-foot registers—
very much like their Italian counterparts. The question of whether a dou-
ble-manual French-style harpsichord is needed at all for Haydn has been open
to debate. For the set of sonatas dedicated to Prince Nicolaus Esterházy, how-
ever, which were conceived in an elevated, courtly style, I follow the suggestion
of A. Peter Brown (1986, 134–35), who argues that the Prince’s French taste—
evident in the construction of Esterháza in imitation of Versailles—surely
resulted in the purchase of a few French harpsichords too. And this opus, inci-
dentally, does require a fully-chromatic, or “French” octave (as it was called in
Vienna), as well as a full five-octave range, and occasionally does benefit from a
two-manual set-up, as in an intricate canon between left and right hands, from
the second movement of the fifth Sonata in E♭ Major, Hob. XVI:25 (see espe-
cially mm. 29 and 30).

4. Square piano (Tafelklavier), Ignaz Kober, Vienna, 1788, by Chris Maene,

Ruiselede, 2007
Increasingly, Haydn scholarship is coming to terms with the fact that the piano
Haydn purchased for himself in 1788, from Wenzel Schanz, was “almost cer-
tainly” a square (Maunder 1998, 129).4 Perhaps more to the point, this type
was the domestic keyboard instrument par excellence for women in the later
eighteenth century. This particular instrument is the second modern-day rep-
lica: the other, of the same model, by Albrecht Czernin, is in the Technisches
Museum in Vienna.

4 This counters conventional wisdom, based on assumption more than evidence, that Haydn must have
owned a grand. Here’s an alternative assumption. Why did Haydn need a “new” fortepiano (which he
purchased in 1788)? Not to play concertos in the theater (as Mozart did), but to compose keyboard
sonatas, to be played in domestic settings by ladies.

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 Tom Beghin

5. “Early” Viennese fortepiano Anton Walter, Vienna, 1782, with Stossmechanik,

by Chris Maene, Ruiselede, 2005
A second world premiere, this instrument is a replica of Mozart’s Anton
Walter piano, not in its present state, but—in response to recent findings that
showed Walter seriously revised or “modernised” the instrument after Mozart’s
death—in its original state of 1782, with a stoss-action and with handstops (left
and right) to raise the damperblock.5 Chris Maene, the maker of the instru-
ment, also built a second action—a Prellmechanik, identical to the modernised
version—to go in the same instrument, and this resulted in:

6. “Late” Viennese fortepiano Anton Walter, Vienna, ca. 1790, with

Prellmechanik, by Chris Maene, Ruiselede, 2005
This instrument is the same as number 5 but with a different action and with
added knee levers to operate the dampers: it is a representation of the Viennese
grand piano in the 1790s rather than the 1780s.

7. English grand piano Longman, Clementi & Co., 1798, by Chris Maene,
Ruiselede, 2004
This English piano is very similar to the now lost Longman & Broderip grand
that was shipped from London to Haydn’s new house in Gumpendorf (a sub-
urb of Vienna) in 1795. Perhaps a business gift, intended to connect Haydn to
the London publishing house for years to come, Haydn’s L & B would in turn
have resembled the instrument owned by Theresa Jansen, the dedicatee of his
concert sonatas, and those available to Haydn in England.

M aKi ng dec isio n s 2: ro o Ms an d pro g raMMes

Having assembled a collection of instruments, the next question is, How do

you cast each of these instruments in appropriate rooms and connect each
room and instrument with appropriate repertoire? After scouting locations
in Vienna, Eisenstadt, Esterháza, and England, following in Haydn’s foot-
steps while also keeping in mind the broader picture of potential players of
his sonatas, we came up with ten programmes. See figure 1 for an overview.

Programme one: “Courting Nobility”

Inspiration for our first programme, “Courting Nobility,” came from the well-known
painting Thé à l’anglaise, which depicts the young Mozart at the residence of the
Prince de Conti. The lid of the harpsichord has been removed, people enjoy their
tea, gather around the musicians. The dimensions of this Salon des quatre glaces—
especially the very high ceiling—reminded us of the music room of Esterháza.

Programme two: “Quality Time”

“Quality Time” in “Room 5” of Haydn’s house in Eisenstadt. We borrow the name
“Room 5” from the floor plan made available by the modern-day museum.

5 The changes to Mozart’s piano are documented in detail in Angermüller and Huber (2000).

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 The Virtual Haydn

When Haydn owned the house, this particular room had probably not yet been
incorporated into his living quarters. We are using it as a typical middle-class room,
with a low ceiling. And we draw inspiration from a beautifully intense engraving
of mixed-sex quatre-mains playing at the clavichord. Note the intense listening by
one man, seated at the perfect clavichord-listening position, to the side of the
soundboard—also the “sweet spot” of the room, this would be the best place for the
microphones.

Programme three: “The Music Lesson”

The listening perspective in this programme is that of the teacher. We have imagined
an aristocratic pupil—a countess or a princess—and have cast this music lesson in a
salon of the Esterházy Palace in Eisenstadt.

Programme four: “Haydn’s Workshop”

In programme four we use another room from Haydn’s house in Eisenstadt, now
specifically one of the composer’s own. It would have been his living room, but it
has the same dimensions as the adjacent room, which would have been his study.
For microphone placement, we drew inspiration from the Guttenbrunn portrait of
Haydn at the keyboard, a clavichord or a square piano. (While the stops on the left
hand side suggest the latter, the case appears unrealistically slim to accommodate
an actual piano action.) The motto of the programme is Haydn’s own description of
his compositional process: “I sat down at the keyboard (Clavier), began to improvise
[fantasiren], sad or happy, serious or playful, depending on my mood” (Griesinger
[1810] 1954, 61, my translation). The idea here is to improvise, to play for oneself: the
player is also the one and only listener.

Programme five: “Your Most Serene Highness!”

The six sonatas Hob. XVI:21–26 were Haydn’s first pieces to be printed officially,
published with the explicit permission of Prince Nicolo Esterházy di Galantha and
appropriately dedicated to him. In the spirit of Haydn’s official presentation of the
opus to his princely employer, we have cast our performance of these elevated- or
court-style sonatas in the magnificent Esterháza Ceremonial Room.

Programme six: The Score

The six “Anno 776” sonatas (as Haydn himself referred to Hob. XVI:27-32 in his
Entwurfkatalog) were first published by Hummel in Amsterdam, without evidence
of Haydn’s consent. To give testimony to the increasing dissemination of Haydn’s
sonatas, we wanted to find a “far away” location, and why not in Québec? We
chose the eighteenth-century Château Ramezay, the French and later the British
Governor’s Residence.

Programme seven: “Equal to the Finest Masters”

We are now back in Vienna for a special performance on a grand fortepiano by the
sisters Katharina and Marianna (von) Auenbrugger, dedicatees of the sonatas Hob.
XVI:35–39 and in early 1780 twenty-four and twenty years of age, respectively. In the
contemporary representation of a salon concert, note the absence of the piano’s lid.
Listeners gather around the musicians.

Programme eight: Musical Letters to a Princess

Compare the title page of these sonatas, which Haydn wrote as a wedding gift for
the young Princess Marie Esterházy, with the golden ornaments on the 1788 Ignaz
Kober square (at present in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), or the beautiful
restored silk fabric on the walls of an Albertina Prunkraum. We are recreating a
splendid but intimate performance context: the princess reading Haydn’s “musical
letters” aloud, governess, music teacher, or mother-in-law by her side.

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 Tom Beghin

Programme nine: Viennese Culture

Finding an actual Viennese salon was a real challenge. The break-through came after
deciding also to play what might be called a “Viennese version” of the big E♭ Sonata
no. 52, re-dedicated to Magdalena von Kurzböck (the original dedicatee in London
being Theresa Jansen). We now felt justified to invite ourselves to the impressive
Lobkowitz Festsaal, which was a popular, albeit exclusive venue for performances in
the mid to late 1790s.

Programme ten: The London Scene

We chose the Holywell Music Room as an alternative to the non-extant Hanover
Square Rooms, where it had been accepted practice for the pianist-soloist to replace
the component of a piano concerto with a grand solo piano sonata.
Fig. 1

p er F o rM i ng in virtual aco u stics

Haydn wrote solo keyboard music for different people, instruments, and social
contexts. Arguably the biggest advantage of using virtual acoustics in our pro-
ject was that, in the same way that we could exchange instruments as we moved
from the one programme to the next, we could change rooms, and this within
the single physical set-up of our laboratory. Virtual acoustics, rather than com-
plicating any insight I had earlier developed about the repertoire, helped bring
all elements together in ways that acoustics of the non-virtual kind might not
have done. For example, Haydn wrote two “concert sonatas” (Hob. XVI:50
and 52), in both cases with the English piano in mind. Up to the early 1790s,
Haydn would have known pianos of the Viennese type exclusively. But during
his residences in London (1791–92 and 1794–95) he familiarised himself with
the English piano. This instrument’s less precise “feather-duster” dampers,
heavier hammers with more layers of softer leather, thicker soundboard, and
much more equalised striking points (i.e., the points where the hammers hit
the strings) inspired him to embrace fuller and more homogenous textures, to
incorporate more silences in his musical narrative and draw attention to that
English “after-ring” (a lingering resonance after the release of a key), and to
paint grand, long-winding bel canto lines.6
This story, however compelling already from an instrument-technological
point of view, becomes richer still when told in an actual eighteenth-century
English room. Therefore we visited and reconstructed the Holywell Music
Room in Oxford. Haydn would have known the room: he received his honor-
ary doctorate just one block away, in the Sheldonian Theatre. The Holywell’s
shoebox dimensions—twenty-one metres long, ten metres wide, nine metres
high—are similar (albeit about one-third shorter) to those of the now non-ex-
tant Hanover Square Rooms in London, where Haydn would have heard per-
formances of solo keyboard sonatas and concertos. From our first contact, hav-
ing brought with us a historical English piano, we realised what a perfect match
instrument and room were: no hard or energy-intense reverberation, as Haydn
would have known from Esterháza or various other larger rooms in Vienna, but

6 A good introduction to these aspects remains van Oort (2000).

298

Figure 1. The Virtual Haydn: ten programmes

 The Virtual Haydn

a warm acoustical enhancement of the characteristics already present in the

instrument, expandable and to be shared by listeners seated on fixed benches
all around the room.7 Viennese grand pianos, on the other hand, because of
their builders’ preference for harsher leather for the hammer coverings, pro-
duce much more articulate attacks of sounds and, thanks to their deliberately
non-uniform striking points, have clear and diversified registers (bass, tenor,
treble, and so on). While these instruments operate beautifully in a private
room, when brought to a larger space, they start relying on the lively acous-
tics of a formal salon or a ceremonial room, with their high ceilings and highly
reflective materials such as mirrors or marble walls, lending the instruments’
sounds necessary body or weight in addition to—and not in compensation
for—their crystal-clear declamation. (Viennese pianos pronounce the “conso-
nants”—the beginnings and endings of musical gestures—clearly and crisply;
English pianos, like the modern piano, shift the emphasis to the “vowels”—to
whatever happens “in the middle.”)
Perception of a room, through headphones or through speakers, became
an essential factor in my recorded performances. The damper-less effects,
obtained by operating hand stops rather than knee levers, so much loved in the
eighteenth century but less familiar today, mingled lusciously with the acous-
tics of the Esterháza Music Room. I found myself looking up to a virtual high
ceiling, wondrously following the reverberations that came out of my self-cre-
ated dulcimer or “pantalon.” The less-spectacular acoustics of smaller rooms
featuring the square piano did not tempt me to make my gestures unnecessar-
ily grand. Not projecting my sound to some listener “out there,” I felt encour-
aged to play solely for myself, perhaps with a special guest at my side, or a few
household members behind me. Cast in the smallest room of all, the clavichord
became almost a room unto itself, a most private space (with its own resonance,
within the case) that I treasured for free fantasising and experimenting. At the
other end of the spectrum, the Holywell Music Room demanded a deliberate
projection of sound to an audience: this setting was the only time in the whole
project when we used the piano lid as a sound reflector in the modern way—
away from the player, the instrument sideways on the stage, the audience on
the player’s right.
While the loudspeakers would create an acoustical context in which I could
relax and enjoy my sonic surroundings almost as a listener of my own playing,
I found that my performing in the virtual room became more focused and
ready for critical listening and recording when we switched to headphones.
Occasional listeners (instrument builders with me in the laboratory) com-
mented that I played “better” when the room was “on” than when it was “off ”
(though they only heard the sounds of the lab, without added reverberation),
an observation that I made sure to test in the control room several times myself:
a “dry” version of myself performing in a virtual room indeed sounded more
interesting and alive than a version of myself performing merely in the acous-
tics of the lab, with no virtual-acoustical feedback. This was evident in the vari-

7 For the acoustical characteristics of “Haydn rooms,” see also Meyer (1986).

299
 Tom Beghin

ety of note lengths, my rhetorical approach to rests or silences, the shaping of

certain articulations, such as sigh-figures or longer slurred groups of notes. The
examples are endless. I found myself not just playing the instrument but also
“playing the room” in ways I hadn’t been conscious of before, and in ways that
were directly transferable to the recorded medium with much less of an ele-
ment of surprise than in conventional recordings.
The big challenge for me, in fact, came later, during the mixing stage, months
or even a year after the actual recordings. As we carefully worked on the final
mixes in several stages, from finding the right balance between close and
reverberant sound at the minute level of “letters” and “words,” all the way to
conveying the larger sense of “phrases” and “periods,” I found myself eagerly
asking for “more” and then still “more room,” up to the point where I again
understood why I had played that silence or that slur in a certain way. Listen,
for example, to the “dry” and “wet” versions, featuring the opening of the slow
movement of the Sonata in F Major, Hob. XVI:23, which I performed in the
virtual Esterháza Ceremonial Room. In the “dry” version (i.e., without added
acoustics) the harpsichord sounds impressive enough, one manual providing
a lute-like accompaniment to a cantilena on the other. But my timing towards
the end of my opening statement makes sense only when heard in the “wet”
version (i.e., with the virtual acoustics as I had heard them myself through my
headphones during recording). Mingling superbly with the luscious acoustics,
these final sounds, which I play not so much “freely” as “time- and space-con-
sciously,” punctuate the end of a courtly révérence or a broadly-spun exordium. It
is thus not just acoustics that is being added to the listening experience. From a
more broadly rhetorical perspective, virtual acoustics helps create a context for
meaningful and appropriate performative gestures—either grand and courtly
(as in this sonata dedicated to Prince Esterházy), or sophisticated and intimate
(as in the three sonatas for the young Princess Marie Esterházy, played on a
square piano).

F ur ther dev elo p Men ts

The concert that celebrated the release of The Virtual Haydn at McGill
University—on 25 September 2009 in the Multi Media Room (MMR), which
has the large proportions of twenty-five by nineteen by fifteen-and-a-half
meters—also marked a new direction in the application of McGill Virtual
Acoustics Technology (VAT): Wieslaw Woszczyk and his team brought virtual
acoustics out of the recording laboratory and into the realm of concert per-
formance. A select audience of some one hundred listeners, surrounding the
performer under a wide array of loudspeakers, witnessed virtual acoustics live,
in three selected virtual rooms of varied effect. I played the clavichord, among
others, in one of our smaller rooms, and the effect was remarkable: capable
of spreading “intimacy” in ever widening circles around me, I felt successful
in drawing the listener into that private space of tangents, strings, and sound-
board. The listener might just as well have been sitting next to me.

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 The Virtual Haydn

On 3 and 4 February 2012, then, we took the next step and invited other
musicians to join us in a programme of chamber music, entitled The Virtual
Salon, featuring pieces by Haydn and Schubert.8 Especially memorable was
the performance of a Haydn string quartet (op. 33, no. 5) with the four quartet
members seated in a circle, their stands facing one another. Many eighteenth-
and early nineteenth-century images convey exactly this kind of performing
constellation, as does an extant contemporary piece of furniture like that of
a “quartet table.” Audience members, enlarging the circle around the quartet,
were invited to “eavesdrop” on the musical conversation. By the time of this
concert, a permanent grid of omni-directional loudspeakers had been installed
in MMR, to be lowered from the ceiling, which remains the set-up that we are
continuing to experiment with at present.9
Early music meets high tech. Whether for “improvising” on one’s own or
“conversing” with chamber music partners, virtual acoustics has made its entry
into the world of historically informed performing. Giving performers alterna-
tives to simply having to “project,” and instead allowing them to “draw” their
listeners into many possible spheres of performance, it may well be there to
stay.

References
Angermüller, Rudolph, and Alfons Huber. Diderot, Denis. (1830) 1995. “Paradoxe sur
2000. Der Hammerflügel von Anton Walter le comédien.” In Oeuvres complètes, edited
aus dem Besitz von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: by Jane M. Dieckmann, Georges Dulac,
Befund, Dokumentation, Analyse. Salzburg: and Jean Varloot, with Ulla Kölving, et al.,
Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum 20:1–132. Paris: Hermann.
Salzburg. Griesinger, Georg August. (1810) 1954.
Bartha, Dénes, ed. 1965. Joseph Haydn: Biographische Notizen über Joseph Haydn.
Gesammelte Briefe und Aufzeichnungen. Vienna: Verlag Paul Kaltschmid. First
Kassel: Bärenreiter. published 1810 (Leipzig: Breitkopf &
Beghin, Tom. 2009. The Virtual Haydn: Härtel).
Complete Works for Solo Keyboard. Naxos, Hoboken, Anthony van. 1957–78. Joseph
NBD0001–04, 4 Blu-ray discs. Haydn: Thematisch-bibliographisches
———. 2011. The Virtual Haydn: Complete Werkverzeichnis. 3 vols. Mainz: B. Schott’s
Works for Solo Keyboard. Naxos, 8501203, 12 Söhne.
compact discs and 1 DVD. Litz, Robert J., and Jeremy Tusz, directors.
———. Forthcoming. Haydn at the Keyboard: 2009. Playing the Room. In Beghin 2009,
A Performer’s Paradox. Chicago: The 2011.
University of Chicago Press. Maunder, Richard. 1998. Keyboard Instruments
Brown, A. Peter. 1986. Joseph Haydn’s Keyboard in Eighteenth-Century Vienna. Oxford:
Music: Sources and Style. Bloomington: Oxford University Press / Clarendon
Indiana University Press. Press.

8 We performed Haydn’s Trio Hob. XV:13 and Quartet “opus 33, no. 5,” as well as some Schubert songs
and the “Trout” Quintet. Musicians included Sanford Sylvan (baritone), Elizabeth Blumenstock (violin
and viola), Olivier Brault (violin and viola), Marjolaine Lambert (violin), Elisabeth Le Guin (cello), and
Nicolas Lessard (double bass).
9 For a technical description and additional photos, see Virtual Acoustic Technology Lab (2013).

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 Tom Beghin

Meyer, Jürgen. 1986. “Gedanken zu den Somfai, László. 1995. The Keyboard
originalen Konzertsälen Joseph Haydns.” Sonatas of Joseph Haydn: Instruments
In Musik und Raum: Eine Sammlung von and Performance Practice, Genres and
Beiträgen aus historischer und künstlerischer Styles. Translated by the author in
Sicht zur Bedeutung des Begriffes “Raum” collaboration with Charlotte Greenspan.
als Klangträger für die Musik, edited by Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Thüring Bräm, 26–37. Basel: GS-Verlag. First published 1979 as Joseph Haydn
Sisman, Elaine. 2008. “Six of One: The Opus zongoraszonátái: Hangszerválasztás és el΄΄oadói
Concept in the Eighteenth Century.” In gyakorlat, m΄΄ufaji tipológia és stíluselemzés
The Century of Bach and Mozart: Perspectives (Budapest: Zeneműkiadó).
on Historiography, Composition, Theory, and van Oort, Bart. 2000. “Haydn and the
Performance, edited by Sean Gallagher English Classical Piano Style.” Early Music
and Thomas Forrest Kelly, 79–107. 28 (1): 73–89.
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Small, Christopher. 1998. Musicking: The Technology Lab, Schulich School of
Meanings of Performing and Listening. Music, McGill University. Accessed 8
Hanover, NH: University Press of New April. http://sites.music.mcgill.ca/vat/.
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64–67.

302
 On Life Is Too Precious:
Blending Musical and Research
Goals through Experimentation

Juan Parra Cancino

Orpheus Research Centre in Music

When trying to define the soft divisions between artistic practice and research,
one of the common pitfalls that we aim to avoid is claiming that what we nor-
mally do as artists in itself constitutes research. For composers, a second trap
lurks within the notion that creating a new work and “producing new knowl-
edge” are one and the same thing and, therefore, that the act of creating music
is equivalent to that of conducting research. This does not necessarily mean
that a particular artistic research project conducted with the primary inten-
tion of producing new musical work as an output should be disregarded, but
it becomes essential to demonstrate which elements of the research process
respond to a fundamental need—or question—that transcends the status of
output and how the formulation of these enquiries shapes the artistic process.1
It was the desire to explore these fine lines of research-through-prac-
tice, as well as the need to challenge the notions of experimentation in music
production by actually “doing the work,” that led me to take part in and com-
bine two projects that, while distant in aims and methods, served the purpose
of presenting contexts, tools, and materials for experimentation. By using
both contexts simultaneously, I sought to revitalise questions about the gen-
esis, goals, and motivations for engaging in artistic research through music
experimentation.

M o saMp la b a nd a d ay in M y l iFe
MoSAMPlab (an acronym for “Mapping of Silent Aspects in Music
Performance—lab”)2 was an initiative conceived by the author and Kathleen

1 Video illustrations relevant to this article are accessible online, at http://www.orpheusinstituut.be/

anthology/repository
2 The original work environment for MoSAMPlab was the virtual platform Posterous. After its acquisition
by Twitter, and its further abandonment of the platform, MoSAMPlab has stopped publishing public
blogs. For the legacy logs of MoSAMPlab, recovered from the original site, see (Coessens and Parra Can-
cino, 2011–12).

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 Juan Parra Cancino

Coessens as a platform for analysing the existing projects at the Orpheus

Research Centre in Music in order to gather information concerning the
salient commonalities between them. Giving special consideration to the
non-sounding aspects of music performance that each research project con-
tained, Coessens developed a conceptual framework to identify these aspects,
gradually focusing on those elements that resonated with the existing work
strands at ORCiM, and especially those dealing with (musical) materials and
embodied interactions.
Setting up this analysis laboratory helped not only to define the links between
these strands and the individual research projects but has also contributed to
encouraging the exploration of different, and hopefully novel, modes of pres-
entation of projects and outcomes that would otherwise have been dissemi-
nated only through more traditional, academic formats.
Part of the development of MoSAMPlab was to design a case study to test
this conceptual framework and its potential for generating a pathway towards
musical experimentation. For this, it was decided to focus on the experiences
recorded by Coessens within the Calendar Variations project (see Coessens and
Douglas 2011). This involved shifting attention from notions of improvisation,
score, and variation in visual arts to their possible implementation in music.
As a starting point, a text written by Coessens was developed to serve as a score
to be interpreted by different artists, with different backgrounds. “Musicians
were asked to interpret the text in a sounding result, implying personal artistic
actions of translation and transformation.”3 The idea of text sonification is not
a novel approach in music, but what made this particular project relevant to
the work of MoSAMPlab was that the setup came from an experience based
in the visual arts, rather than starting with the constraints and expectations
imposed by certain notions (such as “improvisation” and “score”) within the
music tradition.
The invitation to sonify A Day in My Life provided the structural framework
for creating the first layer of my piece Life Is Too Precious for electric guitar and
electronics.4 This was realised by selecting and re-scoring my exploratory
findings in collaboration with Coessens. This initial material was modified in
response to the improvisation of different, drone-like musical material based
on a real-time interpretation of the text. The drones were created using an
electric guitar equipped with a Fernandes “sustainer” system, which provided
a continuous sound signal, which was later transformed using diverse guitar
stomp-boxes (ring modulators and pitch-shifters). Finally, a cross convolu-
tion and spatialisation algorithm programmed by the author in the Max/MSP5
programming environment was created with the intention of allowing future
instrumental layers to interact with the “dynamic drone.” Real-time control of
the Max/MSP portion of the instrument was achieved using the “Phoenix Egg

3 Coessens, K. “A day in my life.” On “Three years later...” Orpheus Institute Research report 2010-2013,
p.10.
4 CD, track 5, is a performance of Life is too precious.
5 For more information on Max/MSP see Cycling ’74 (2013).

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 On Life Is Too Precious

controller,” developed by the author in collaboration with Lex van den Broek,
the head of the Technical Department of the Royal Conservatory of The Hague,
Holland.6

“a c ur e Fo r th e c o M Mo n Fetish ” 7

The second component of the experimental blend that gave birth to Life Is Too
Precious was my involvement in the $100 Guitar Project, which may be regarded
as a “poster child” for the positive, creative, and proactive use of social media
(see Didkovsky and O’Meara 2013). I became acquainted with the project while
searching for examples of online music collaboration tools to use in the setting
up and development of the MoSAMPlab.
The $100 Guitar Project was a collaborative initiative started by Nick
Didkovsky and Chuck O’Meara, two guitarist friends who for years sent each
other “gear-related” emails, “usually for overpriced instruments neither or
us can afford,” Didkovsky says. “So when [Chuck] sent me a message describ-
ing the ‘guitar of my dreams’, I wondered how many years of my kids’ college
future I’d have to sacrifice to consider it. But Chuck was being ironic, as the
guitar of my dreams was this unbranded anonymous red guitar selling for $100”
(Didkovsky quoted in Campbell 2013).
Once the guitar was acquired, Didkovsky and O’Meara decided to reach out
to some guitarist friends to share the guitar with them.

The main constraints were that each participant could keep the guitar for a week,
and had to submit an original, non-copyrighted track. Initially, I told everyone that
they needed to keep their contribution under 4 or 5 minutes. Then, as more people
joined, it went down to 4 minutes, then 3, then 2, at which point I cut it off. For
my contribution, I wanted to do a suite of short pieces that were transcriptions of
improvised vocal solos.8 That was a very nice “fit” for this project because the pieces
were short and would not occupy a big chunk of contiguous time. I suspected they’d
be easy to fit in between what was sure to be a wildly heterogeneous collection of
music. (Didkovsky and Parra Cancino, 2013)

One of these friends was Larry Polansky, who defines crossing paths with the
guitar as a “wonderful, easy coincidence.” His contribution to the project

comes from two influences. One, I have long been interested in playing Ruth
Crawford Seeger’s American Folk Song Arrangements on the guitar, and I had been
improvising on the simple but beautiful version of “London Bridge is Falling Down”
from that book (I love the quick metre change in the middle). A few days before I got
the guitar, Amy [Beal] and I had walked across an extraordinary, enormous, and high
bridge over the Hudson in Poughkeepsie, NY, in freezing cold. It was a simple matter
to combine the bridge’s county and the folk song. (Polansky and Parra Cancino,
2013)

6 For more on Lex van den Broek’s work, see Ipson (2013).
7 This is the title of Giacomo Fiore’s (2013) review of the $100 Guitar Project CD.
8 For an example of Didkovsky’s compositional approach, see Didkovsky (2010).

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Another contributor to the project was Nels Cline, experimental guitarist and
member of rock band Wilco. He recalls his reasons to get involved in the pro-
ject as

pretty innocent in my part. It just sounded fun! It sounded like a cool idea. Certainly,
the $100 guitar itself isn’t what it thought it was cool about it. What I thought it was
interesting was the idea of the guitar being handed from one person to another.
That and the time limitation for the contribution, although it seems like most
people exceeded that limit. (...) I take these things pretty literally, and I tried to keep
my piece really short. Because there were people I respected involved, and because
of the overall concept is that I decided to take part on the project. The festive, social
side of it was what made it fun and charming. (Cline and Parra Cancino, February
2014)

On the constraints of the project, and how these influenced the creative pro-
cess, Cline mentions that one of the biggest constraints was

the instrument itself, a one-pickup guitar. I was uncertain whether by the time I
would get the guitar the strings would even resound. I wouldn’t find any of that
particularly daunting, since there was absolute freedom as to what to do. If the
strings would have been flat on the neck, or collapsed, I would have just put a false
bridge (or two) on the fingerboard, using chopsticks and would have played it like a
zither.

I did equivocate at to whether I was going to use effects pedals or not. At the very last
minute I decided to tune the low E string. The previous contributor had completely
detuned the guitar. I put it in standard tuning and then decided at the last minute to
drop the low E to E flat. I then came up with a couple of thematic ideas and decided
to add the Zurdo [Brazilian samba bass drum], put a standard bass drum beater
on it and play that and guitar for the main part, and add some looping at the end.
Ultimately, I wasn’t concerned about the condition of the guitar, but that could have
been a constraint. When I discovered that the guitar was playable, I took it from
there. (Cline and Parra Cancino, 2014)

When asked about the potential experimental notion(s) present in the project,
Didkovsky points out that: “The project itself is experimental in the sense that
it is built on a premise with a few clear rules whose outcome is unknown. We
put the word out and invited a few people, some of whom invited others, and
we observed the growth of this multi-conscious network organism” (Didkovsky
and Parra Cancino, 2013).
Polansky mentions that the musicologist Amy Beal “once said to me that
‘experimental composers’ are the ones that answer their own phones, which
confirms my experience. Nick and I both answer our own phones, as do, I guess,
most of the other guitar players on the project” (Polansky and Parra Cancino,
2013).

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 On Life Is Too Precious

On the experimental notions within his piece for the project, Cline points out
that

I feel that the piece I decided to do was not particularly experimental. Maybe the
way I concluded the piece, playing sound boxes, with different bird calls, mating
calls, and that are primarily used by bird hunters. I mistakenly hit one of the buttons
of another sound-effects box, which triggered a loud horn sound, and then played
the sounds over the pickups, which I myself don’t find a particularly experimental
thing to do, but it could be perceived as such. The ending of the piece, with this
sound-boxes noises feeding back from the amplifier, and with delay added to it, was
primarily meant to be amusing. The piece itself is supposed to be amusing since it
has a sort of post-metal vibe to it, which I thought it would distinguish it from some
of the other pieces on the record. I decided not to use over-dubs and let it be a live,
one-take performance. The direction I took aesthetically was then very spontaneous.
It was what it felt right to do that day. I decided that I was happy with tossing off
something that could be a fun detour in the course of the entire program. (Cline and
Parra Cancino, 2014).

The $100 Guitar arrived in Ghent on 26 September 2011. This coincided with
the preparation of a collective performance of several iterations of A Day in
My Life, realised by musicians participating in the ORCiM-Pentacon Research
Festival.9 The preparation for this performance was conceived within the
framework of MoSAMPlab as follows:
Given the nature of the text structure, Juan will create five different textures, using
a drone guitar system and modifying the timbre nature of the textures by means of
electronic manipulation of the harmonic content (Ring modulation/distortion), as
well as mechanically (re-tuning between the parts).

The task for the upcoming days will be to work on/experiment with the different
possibilities and come up with the settings for the 5 different textures (tuning plus
effect settings) (Coessens and Parra Cancino, 2011–12).

About the real time processing:

The role of the real time processing (and use of the Phoenix Egg) during the
performance will be as follows:
Juan will design a sound processing system in the computer that will take two
incoming signals and will “morph” them together to create a new sound layer. This
will be done by some means of spectral manipulation like convolution or vocoding.

Using vocoding as the explanatory metaphor, the “carrier” signal will always be the
drone guitar system, and the modulating signal will shift between mix-downs of each
one of the performers (or groups of performers).

Therefore, a preliminary set-up would have three different modulator signals (The
McGill Expanded Trio, Vanessa Tomlinson & Kim Cunio and Catherine Laws,
possibly with Damien Harron).

9 Organised by the Orpheus Institute between 5 and 8 October 2011, The ORCiM-Pentacon festival
gathered musician-researchers from the Orpheus Research Centre in Music with faculty and students
of McGill, the Sibelius Academy, the Guildhall, London, the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and
Queensland School of Music.

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 Juan Parra Cancino

The resulting layer will be then processed and spatialised by Juan using the Phoenix
Egg controller.

In terms of time structure for the piece, we are planning to honour the +/- 24
minutes time-frame (one minute equals one hour of the “day”). This means that
each “drone” on the guitar will last about four minutes with transitions of about one
minute (transition considers retuning and resetting of the effects).

On a side note, there will be a time-compressed version of the drone system tested
as stand-alone “etude.” This will be done for the “100 dollar guitar project” and will
last 1’30.”

This will be recorded on 26 September 2011 using the specific instrument of that
project.

l i Fe i s t o o p rec io u s
The preparatory work for the collective Day in my Life performance provided
the author with a clear framework for developing a sonic and conceptual inter-
action with others.
On 26 September 2011, I set out to record my contribution for the $100 Guitar
Project alongside the words and reasoning of Harry Partch, whose accounts of
his experiences of instant human connection between people who have aban-
doned the race for being “important”10 struck me as the perfect metaphor to
illustrate the rationale of my project and my relationship to it.
The technical setup for A Day in My Life started from the original text/
poem, but rather than generating a “finished” musical output, it provided a
way to facilitate the blending through performance of improvising musicians
with different aesthetic backgrounds. For Life is too precious, however, the pro-
cess of sonification focussed more specifically on a “traditional,” gesture-ori-
ented guitar playing.11 I used an array of guitar effects processors, to give to
each “layer” a distinct timbre characteristic, such as wah-wah, distortions, and
reverb. Perhaps the most important departure from “traditional” playing was
the use of the same tuning developed for the “drone guitar.” The tuning (from
low to high F♯–B♭–C–D–E–F♯) allowed more unexpected harmonics to pop
up when the drone guitar was activated; and when used on the $100 Guitar it
allowed free-exploratory play on the fretboard, making it difficult to rely on
pre-acquired playing patterns.12
The elaboration of the final work, a condensation of both processes, revealed
aspects of the original text that had not been available to me while engaged in the
work. The notion of the creation of constraints paradoxically enfolds the inher-
ent potential of demanding freedom from these constraints. Improvisation,
whether circumscribed in a particular tradition or not, relies upon contextual-
isation as much as surprise. If anything could be preserved from the blending
of these projects, it would be an understanding that the nature of experimen-

10 See “Life Is Too Precious to Spend it with Important People” (Partch 2000).
11 CD track 6 features a recording of Life is Too Precious played by the composer.
12 This sonification process can be seen in Parra Cancino (2011).

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 On Life Is Too Precious

tation in musical practice will constantly demand a dynamic and extremely

fragile balance between definition of skills and embracing of weaknesses. To
operate within such a fragile space, sometimes you need the company of a com-
munity that can “forget” to be important. In the words of Partch (2000), “One
gets among a group of transient. . . workers and right away there is a human
contact. It doesn’t mean that they always like each other, but there is human
contact, without this fighting for place, constantly.”

References
Campbell, Karen. 2013. “The ‘$100 Douglas, Anne, and Kathleen Coessens.
Guitar Project’ Send a Guitar on 2013. “Improvisation as Experimentation
an Epic Journey.” Boston Globe, in Everyday Life and Beyond.”
February 14. Accessed 27 September Unpublished paper.
2013. http://www.bostonglobe.com/ Fernandes Guitars. 2013. Information
arts/music/2013/02/14/the-guitar- page on Fernandes sustainer system.
project-sends-cheap-instrument-epic- Homepage of Fernandes Guitars.
journey/3GVzb7hBlmgesCgD0Y7S4N/ Accessed 10 September 2013. http://
story.html. www.fernandesguitars.com/sustainer/
Cline, Nels and Juan Parra Cancino. Nels sustainer.html.
Cline interviewed by Juan Parra Cancino, Fiore, Giacomo. 2013. “A Cure for the
Orpheus Institute, 18 February, 2014. Common Fetish: The $100 Guitar
Coessens, Kathleen and Juan Parra Cancino. Project.” Classical Guitar, February 15.
2011–12. Legacy logs of MoSAMPlab. Accessed 12 September 2013. http://
Homepage of Juan Parra Cancino. www.classicalguitar.org/2013/02/a-cure-
Accessed 10 September 2013. http:// for-the-common-fetish-the-100-guitar-
juanparrac.com/research/mosamp/files/ project/.
archive-2011.html Ipson. 2013. “News.” Homepage of
Coessens, Kathleen, and Anne Douglas. 2011. Ipson (Lex van den Broek, Electronic
On Calendar Variations. Banchory, UK: Department, Royal Conservatory, The
Woodend Barn Publishing. Hague). Accessed 12 September 2013.
Cycling ’74. 2013. Information page on Max. http://www.ipson.nl/.
Homepage of Cycling ’74. Accessed 10 Polansky, Larry, and Juan Parra Cancino.
September 2013. http://cycling74.com/ Larry Polansky interviewed by Juan Parra
products/max/. Cancino, by email, February 2013.
Didkovsky, Nick. 2010. $100 Guitar Partch, Harry. 1995. (2000) “Life Is Too
Project: Nick Didkovsky. YouTube Precious to Spend it with Important
video, 1:47. Accessed 25 September People.” On Enclosure Two: Historic Speech-
2010. http://www.youtube.com/ Music Recordings from the Harry Partch
watch?v=if57T2aGxrI&feature=youtu.be. Archives. Innova Records 401, Disc 1, Track
Didkovsky, Nick and Chuck O’Meara. 2013. 17.
Homepage of the $100 Guitar Project. Parra Cancino, Juan. 2011. $100 Guitar
Accessed 27 September 2013. http:// Project: Juan Parra Cancino. YouTube
www.100dollarguitar.com. video, 10:44. Accessed 26 September
Didkovsky, Nick, and Juan Parra Cancino. 2013. http://www.youtube.com/
Nick Didkovsky interviewed by Juan Parra watch?v=UmdzVgD55c0.
Cancino, by email, March 2013.

309
 Interview with
Agostino Di Scipio
Hans Roels
Orpheus Research Centre in Music

Agostino Di Scipio (b. Italy, 1962) is a composer, sound artist, music theorist,
and scholar. Live computer music, solo or in combination with acoustic instru-
ments, forms a large part of his artistic oeuvre. He has also developed sound
installations and large-scale music theatre works. In the last ten years, the
interaction between sound, performance space, technology, and performer has
become central to his work. The live electronics react to the acoustic character-
istics of the hall or to unexpected sounds and, in their turn, change the sound
in that hall. This feedback loop between human, technology, and environ-
ment is an essential part of what he calls the ecosystemic approach. Di Scipio
has written articles on music technology, composition, and social issues in
music for journals such as Journal of New Music Research, Computer Music Journal,
Contemporary Music Review, Leonardo, Perspectives of New Music, Organised Sound,
and Positionen.
Di Scipio visited the Orpheus Institute in February 2012. He gave a lec-
ture-performance during which he performed parts of his solo live-electronics
composition Feedback Study and a new work for flute and electronics.

HANS ROELS: Last night your new composition for flute and electronics,
2 pezzi di ascolto e sorveglianza (Two pieces of listening and surveillance), was
performed at the Orpheus Institute. It was a try-out session during your lec-
ture-performance. It seems that the creative process of this work took a lot of
time. Can you tell us something about this phase?
AGOSTINO DI SCIPIO: Usually I don’t start working on a piece with a very
clear idea of what I’m going to achieve. However, in this case I had at least the
idea to explore a space that is smaller, more individual, and more characteris-
tic than the usual concert hall. I imagined the flute to be a small corridor or a
tunnel surrounded by the space of the outer room. Technically I viewed it as
a “waveguide.” This image of a space within a space, or a niche within a larger
environment, had already been an inspiration for me in other recent pieces, for
example in installations like Stanze private (2007) and Condotte pubbliche (2011).
For this new work, I wanted to do something with a flute. A friend gave me one
of his flutes, actually the one that I was using yesterday. For three years I have
lived with it and learned how to play it a little bit. I can even play a normal C

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scale! (laughs). But more importantly, I have learned things about the instru-
ment that I previously didn’t know. I didn’t become a flautist myself, but I did
engage with the flute. Next, I started experimenting with microphone place-
ment, inside and outside the instrument. I did this step by step. Already in the
beginning I thought it would be good to explore to what extent the hands and
fingers could control unwanted sounds, the tiny residual noises due to the key
mechanics and to the contact of the hands holding the instrument. When you
handle the instrument there is always some noise. Of course, that also depends
on the quality of the flute and mine wasn’t a very good one. Anyway, I put these
and other observations together but I didn’t know precisely what I was going
to do. I did know, though, that I wanted to use these findings and observations.
For this composition, it was a question of finding the proper sequence of per-
formance actions. I spent a lot of time trying out different actions and writing
an action score. This was all happening within the context of electro-acoustic
amplification and computer processing. As I have said, I was living with the
instrument, in fact not only with the flute but with the whole electro-acous-
tic set-up. Every now and then I went back to this set-up and refined it, and
sometimes tried the performance set-up in informal presentations, such as last
night. So the piece is worked out through a series of avant-premiere perfor-
mances . . . Until recently, I did not have a deadline to finish this work but now I
have one: in September 2012 the work should be more or less finished. I’ll hand
it over to a real flautist for the official premiere.1
ROELS: Is this way of working exceptional for you?
DI SCIPIO: Well, with this flute piece I have spent more time working with
the instrument and the set-up than I usually do. Generally I try to design the
interactions among the system components, including the instrument and the
performer, and that always requires time, of course. Concerning instruments,
I try to find someone who has the instrument and can lend it to me, or I buy
one. For example, in the next few months I’ll be working on a bowing piece,
so I purchased a violin, and now I am experimenting with it in a context that
is roughly similar to the technical performance set-up. I can then start design-
ing and refining the performance ecosystem, meaning the web of interactions
among the system components, including the surrounding space.
ROELS: Room-dependent signal processing often recurs in your work (Di
Scipio 2002). Does this imply that you almost necessarily need to experiment?
DI SCIPIO: It does. Now I know, based on experience, that if I stick to a certain
kind of relationship, I can expect a certain range of system behaviours although
I can’t exactly predict what kind of system behaviour will take place and how
the performance will evolve. My predictions may be right in some aspects, and
totally wrong in others. When you move from the studio to a particular perfor-
mance space, too many factors change and playing safe becomes impossible.

1 The performance took place at the Fondazione Scelsi, Rome, on 20 September 2012. Manuel Zurria was
the flautist. CD, track 4, offers a performance of di Scipio’s 2 pezzi di ascolto e sorveglianza.

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 Interview with Agostino Di Scipio

ROELS: Your music often involves a certain amount of risk for the performer
and for the listener because the performance environment plays an important
role and pushes the performance in unexpected directions.
DI SCIPIO: Everybody is at risk in my music (laughs). I call it the fragility of
my compositions. As a listener you can experience this fragility, you can hear it.
In the case of a strong resonator like a flute, we know in advance that there will
be some sound to process. But room-dependent pieces are more subtle and
risky, because you never know how the acoustics will be at the moment of the
actual performance due to the audience and other circumstances. I take risks
and I try to share them with listeners. I try to turn [these risks] into a tangible
element in the piece. When unexpected things happen, the system is expected
to manifest itself to be really performative, in the normal use of this word—it
should work well, stay safe, and keep on going, whatever happens in its sur-
roundings. Before you start, you do not know if everything will work well. By
the time you get some sound, and it evolves in a viable articulation in time, it
is performative, it functions. That is a result! The quality of the piece and the
quality of performance is another issue. Other criteria arise: How many system
states are visited through the performance and how is this mapped onto a vari-
ety of timbres and gestures? The more varied the resultant range of gestures
and timbres, the better the performance. This is not an aesthetic judgement,
this is a systemic judgement.
ROELS: Is there a risk that the system becomes so uncontrollable and repet-
itive that listeners perceive it as boring?
DI SCIPIO: If failure happens, it must be experienced as such. As a composer
you are in a position to share the experience of failing. So if you are able to
design the sonic process in a way that a failure is communicated and is shared
with the audience, then that is a success, it’s a good thing to happen. You are
not depicting or representing failure, you are witnessing it, experiencing it. Not
being able to do anything is a quite interesting experience to have. Also for the
listener: you feel that something slips out of your hands. That’s the first part
of the answer. The second is that I usually provide rules and suggestions in the
score to govern the drift, or unwanted repetitive behaviours. The performer—
whether on an electronic or acoustic instrument—faces an emergency situa-
tion and can take security measures, actions to cope with these situations. In
these compositions there is a kind of dramaturgy that is not written or repre-
sented, but that is produced and experienced during the performance.
ROELS: In my own experimentation outside the concert hall, these failures
do happen, and I guess they are a part of the creative process.
DI SCIPIO: Of course. I know in advance which compositions are more or
less risky or fragile. Background Noise Study (2005) is very risky, for example (Di
Scipio 2011). Yesterday, as I was rehearsing at the Orpheus Institute, I realised
the lecture space wasn’t responsive enough. The variety of ambient noise was
low, so I preferred not to take the risk of performing it. More generally, there
is an inverse relationship between the amount of risk and of preparation time.
The more time you have for practising, the less risky the performance becomes.
The more time you stay there and live in the environment where you are per-

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forming, the better. You get a feeling of the local acoustics and develop a sensi-
bility for possible performances. This is a problem because you need to ask for
longer rehearsal time, which may not always be available.
ROELS: What role does musicianship play in those of your performances
that rely heavily on computer processing and other technologies?
DI SCIPIO: I assume that a large part of what we usually mean by “musi-
cianship,” especially as experienced by instrumentalists, is about being able
to achieve and experience a good balance of means (instrumental action, per-
formance techniques) and ends (expressiveness, quality of sound, capability
to interact with others, a sensibility for short-time causal relationships, and so
on). I view this as a particular contribution of musicians to society: they bal-
ance means and ends and don’t let the means command or dictate the ends.
Also related to this is the special sensibility of musicians to the surrounding
space: instrumental performance is always adapted to the room where it takes
place. This is again of the highest relevance in a world where our daily experi-
ence is more and more detached from the experience of real spaces and that
is ideologically driven by a simplistic notion of technology. I think of my work
as focusing strictly on these few grains of musical culture that we are losing
because of cultural situations and industrial popular culture (Anderson 2005;
Di Scipio 1998).
ROELS: Did you have unexpected reactions from the audience in situa-
tions where you felt that they were expecting the normal relationship between
means and ends?
DI SCIPIO: I have had some odd reactions. For example, some people ques-
tion why the audible result should be understood in terms of the emergent
properties of the system. Other people don’t want to know about the technical-
ities of the exchange with the environment, they just want to enjoy the result.
But if there is any contribution of an artwork to society, it has to do with trying
to share. A listener expecting certain results simply doesn’t listen to my music,
which is about interactions, connections, relationships, shared responsibilities.
I can’t say how it happened to be so, but my works often question the listener,
they ask questions of the listener. Take my installations as an example.2 If a visi-
tor-listener talks too loud, the installation remains silent. The idea is that if you
came to listen to the work, you should try to be silent and listen to it. There is
an ambivalent relationship: the presence of the listener affects the sound that
he or she is listening to, the work enables the visitor to reflect on him- or herself
as being audibly present in a non-neutral way, and it makes the visitor listen to
him- or herself. This is engaging for some people and annoying or too demand-
ing for others. But I don’t mind too much about the latter. Actually, when peo-
ple tell me they are annoyed with this behaviour, I consider this a confirmation
that my installation is working! Not because I want to annoy them, but because
I want them to feel who they are. My work questions their role as a listener.

2 Untitled 2005, (DAAD Galerie, Berlin, 17 June–3 July 2005); Condotte Pubbliche (Public Conduits)—Ecosys-
temic Sound Construction (GMM Galerie, Berlin, 19 March–21 May 2011).

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ROELS: As a composer and sound artist you haven’t only worked in the con-
cert hall. You have created several theatre compositions and have produced
audio installations in musea and other spaces outside the concert hall. Do
these spaces give you extra opportunities to experiment?
DI SCIPIO: Absolutely, yes. The installations are a special way to focus on cer-
tain experiences that remain implicit in concert pieces. They allow me to focus
on the physical presence of visitors in the space. There is no necessary sense of
dramaturgy, at least not in a short span of time. If you leave the formal concert
setting, you can focus on other levels of sonic communication: sound can be a
medium for sharing aspects of human experience that are neglected in the con-
cert hall. For example, in installations I am quite free to show the technicalities
as they are, and not hide anything in the technical set-up: not because I want
to exhibit the technical gear as such, but because I want to stress how sound
comes into existence, how it is part of material processes and is shared. The
technical element can be overt and clear, so visitors can start thinking about the
connections and interactions that produce these sounds. In a concert setting,
you cannot highlight this aspect. Theatre is another direction to move in for
me, although at this moment I have only composed two or three theatre works.
But even a piece like Background Noise Study, in the Vocal Tract, has a kind of theat-
rical element to it. A performer has a miniature microphone in his/her mouth
and uses the mouth as a resonator. I realise that some performance practices
that are necessary to produce sound lend themselves quite well to theatrical
designs; I am working on a couple of ideas in this direction, but it takes time,
especially when non-musicians are involved. On the one hand, the communica-
tion with them is problematic, but on the other, the collaboration can be really
positive and far-reaching, because they are more free from specific professional
expectations and even more available in terms of listening discipline. It’s basi-
cally the same problem as with non-conventional, non-formal venues and sit-
uations, such as courts and open spaces. These require more experimentation.
By the way, one objection that was raised against my works is that they don’t
work in open spaces, because reflected sound is essential in my music. But I can
succeed in using spaces, I know how to move my ecosystemic concept to the
open air: it just needs more complicated practical arrangements.
ROELS: I can imagine that in an open air situation you have the most open-
minded audience. The expectation of a certain kind of music is almost absent.
DI SCIPIO: Yes, normally the questions are not on an aesthetic or language
level. The crucial element for both expert and non-expert listeners is the aware-
ness they have about what the sound is bringing to them. They can be very
active listeners and very engaged, very committed to music, but they may not
be able to listen to what sound is bringing to them from the source or the envi-
ronment. They only enjoy it aesthetically. That’s the main problem. Enjoying
only aesthetically means that you lend yourself quite well to the industry and
industrially produced music. I don’t argue for or against this music, but as a
composer the problem is that they don’t listen to the sound, they only listen to
the musical language.

315
 Hans Roels

ROELS: Is this also a motivation to develop your own tools and algorithms?
I guess that an important part of your time while composing music and experi-
menting with the set-up is spent on designing software tools?
DI SCIPIO: Yes, as far as possible I try to be the author and designer of the
composition tools and the performance set-up. For me it is very important to
be responsible for what I present in public. It is a kind of testimony and politi-
cal statement to be responsible for your actions. It also means to be competent
in technical areas and to be aware of the musical meaning of a composition and
its performance. Such an approach acts as a mirror for the audience and that is
why it questions the listener.
ROELS: How important is your independence? You have your own personal
studio but you have also been a guest at several art and research institutions.
DI SCIPIO: In part, this independence happened probably because of my
bad character, but after a while it became a prerequisite to do things that are
impossible within larger institutes because they have very different expecta-
tions. Research funding is flowing in this or that direction and you have to keep
up with it. It is the basic dialectic of the researcher and the artist within the
academy. Using very simple technical configurations is also very important to
me. I prefer to design and work on the interrelationships between simple pro-
cesses, between tools that are adaptable and not too specific. I try to avoid cre-
ating works that need a specialised, powerful piece of gear or a computationally
expensive device. I don’t raise money to buy hi-tech tools, or to rent special
studios and rooms. I try to do my best with the little that I can personally afford.
Some people have visited me in my studio and been surprised to see how basic
my studio configuration is. They probably expected many powerful computers,
many screens, and many speakers. Flexibility in the studio is far more impor-
tant for me, the possibility to pack and unpack, to try a set-up, and then move
to a different one with a certain ease. The overall configurations are capable
of being rewired and can be tested and dismantled quite easily, although not
necessarily quickly.
ROELS: Leaving empty spaces in your studio or workshop gives you the
opportunity to change plans and experiments while you are composing. You
can try something new if you suddenly want to.
DI SCIPIO: Flexibility in the technical configurations in the studio has to
do with the creative process, that is true. Setting up things and materials in an
empty space allows you to focus on the system relationships you are designing,
to make them work on their own, leaving aside what is unnecessary. You can
draw a profile or a spatial horizon within which the work performs the way it
does. By the way, the latter point brings us to a related issue. Installations have
a temporal horizon, a duration within which the listener pays attention to the
installation, for example five or ten minutes or maybe even twenty depending
on who is listening. But there is also a spatial horizon, which is how far you can
go from the installation and still witness what it is doing. This spatial horizon
is a very important element of musical form. We think of form only in terms of
dramaturgy and time but it also relates to space. Form exists within a certain
sphere and within a certain horizon. There is an ecological approach to psy-

316
 Interview with Agostino Di Scipio

choacoustics that is very valuable in my opinion. It concerns the perception of

space, movement in space, presence, bodily presence, and proximity (Neuhoff
2004; Rocchesso and Fontana 2003).

References
Anderson, Christine, and Agostino Di Scipio. ———. 2011. “Listening to Yourself through
2005. “Dynamic Networks of Sonic the Otherself: On Background Noise Study
Interactions: An Interview with Agostino and Other Works.” Organised Sound 16 (2):
Di Scipio.” Computer Music Journal 29 (3): 97–108.
11–28. Neuhoff, John G., ed. 2004. Ecological
Di Scipio, Agostino. 1998. “Questions Psychoacoustics. Amsterdam: Elsevier
Concerning Music Technology.” Angelaki: Academic Press.
Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 3 (2): Rocchesso, Davide, and Federico Fontana,
31–40. eds. 2003. The Sounding Object. Florence:
———. 2003. “‘Sound Is the Interface’: Mondo estremo.
From Interactive to Ecosystemic Signal
Processing.” Organised Sound 8 (3): 269–77.

317
 Kairos in the Flow of
Musical Intuition
Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö
Orpheus Research Centre in Music

i ntr o duc ti o n
A dialogue in a moment of musical creation unfolds:

Stefan (guitarist): Actually, I’ve been thinking that maybe this is where we
should reach some kind of, a spectral kind of quartertone scordatura.
Richard (composer): mhm, or it could be actually the harmonic series.
Stefan: Yeah that could be . . .
Richard: That’s actually how we do it! Let’s do the harmonic series.
Stefan: We’re actually quite close to it . . .
Richard: What’s the lowest you’re comfortable with doing on the bottom
string?
Stefan: C is fine.
Richard: Maybe we should do the top six harmonics, based on . . . let’s see,
if C is the third, then it would be the harmonic series based on A♭.
Stefan: Which makes sense you know, G♯, or A♭!
Richard: Oh God . . . perfect! That’s perfect; we do it on the fundamental of
G♯ .

***

Strandlines (Karpen 2007a; Östersjö 2010), a composition for guitar and com-
puter by the American composer Richard Karpen, is built on a series of tunings
of the six-string classical guitar. The dialogue above, transcribed from a work-
ing session in a studio at DXARTS, University of Washington,1 is taken from
the moment when the composer and the guitarist Stefan Östersjö were work-
ing out the tuning for the final section of the piece. The sequence of events
contained several instances of sudden decision making, but also of analytical
reasoning.

1 The video clip from which the transcription was made can be accessed online at http://www.orpheusin-
stituut.be/anthology/repository.

319
 Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

The dialogue ends with an enthusiastic exclamation from the composer, but
the line of reasoning may need a further contextualisation. The piece starts with
a tuning in which all strings (but one) are tuned to a G♯. Ending with a chord
derived from the overtone series of G♯ seems to bring the harmonic sequence
of the retunings together both on a conceptual and a perceptual level.
Stefan and Richard had to agree upon four successive tunings and looked
for a tuning system for the final section of the piece. The sequence of events
contained several instances of sudden decisions, relying on music expertise
and intuition. They looked at the notation of the first four scordaturas with the
intention of finding a logical way to proceed and bring the piece to a close.
Stefan then discussed his musical intuition concerning the large-scale form as
demanding a movement into a tuning that allowed a more sonorous exposure
of chordal material. Negotiating some of Richard’s other preliminary ideas,
they turned to a more analytical gaze on the transition from the fourth tuning.
They had already agreed that to create a sense of novelty when the new tuning
is introduced there had to be a radical harmonic change (since there would not
be any further changes in harmony because Stefan would be playing only with
the right hand). The dialogue, an outpouring on the possibilities of harmonics,
took place at this point of kairos (the right moment of decision), and Stefan
proposed that the last tuning could be conceived as an open tuning based on
spectral analysis. Both musicians became quite excited about the way in which
this idea presented itself to them seemingly as a natural consequence of the
musical structure that they were in the middle of creating. It is exactly such
moments of decision-making and their various underlying processes that are
the focus in this text.
Experience is, for all living beings, an ongoing, interactive process between
the body and its environment. However, experience, being a universal condition
for and of living, is embedded in particular time-space and knowledge frames.
It is both passive and active: something that “happens” as well as something
that is “enacted”—consider the experience of breathing, of feeling gravity, or
of resting. In the moment of musical performance, experience, time, space,
and attention conflate in a dynamic interaction between perception of sound,
movement, and material objects, such as score and instrument in action-per-
ception-reflection loops. The process and the outcome of that interaction are
neither predictable nor totally dependent upon what “happens.” The interac-
tion itself opens a field of possibilities.
But how does the artist cope with that field of possibilities? What triggers
sudden human attention, revealing itself as a potentiality in that moment? Or,
what is it that sometimes allows the answer to emerge within the “question”
that is posed through a musical challenge—a new compositional idea, a new
musical instrument to master, or a new improvisational situation—in a man-
ner similar to how Descartes conceived of the fundamentals of scientific know-
ing? Descartes referred to it in terms of lumen naturalis (natural light); a similar
answer we are likely to give is, “through intuition.”[The Greeks referred to this
as the moment of kairos, the moment when decisions and actions have to be
taken in the “now,” in the light of both contingency and human insight.

320
 Kairos in the Flow of Musical Intuition

We argue that the musical process implies a bricolage of implicit, tacit, expert
knowledge or skill and a heightened awareness of the “now” moment. These
joint movements, the involvement of tacit expertise and/in the moment of
“now,” are what are called intuition and kairos respectively. Intuition can be con-
sidered a commitment in the field of an experience that opens a sense that was
potentially present or could be opened in that experience. Kairos is the oppor-
tune moment where the artist takes the initiative and intervenes.
In the following, we will define the notions of kairos and intuition. We will
explore how the field of intuition and the moments of kairos interact in the pro-
cesses of musical creation, how intuitions work, how—in Descartes’s words—
nature sheds light in our bodies, and how they are enacted by us. Because this
exploration is linked to our own artistic experience, we will further illustrate
the interplay of kairos and intuition within the opening example through our
own musical practice: the creation of the composition Strandlines in the work-
ing session with Richard Karpen and Stefan Östersjö.
This more theoretical article is related to our three other texts in this book:
“Habitus and the Resistance of Culture,” in which we draw on intercultural
artistic practice in a further inquiry into the function of intuition, habitus
and different forms of resistance in musical experimentation, “Repetition,
Resonance, and Discernment,” in which we dig into Stefan Östersjö’s perfor-
mances of Henrik Frisk’s composition for ten-string guitar and electronics
Repetition Repeats All Other Repetitions to elaborate specifically musical aspects
of the notion of kairos, and finally “Intuition, Hexis and Resistance in Musical
Experimentation” which is our attempt at drawing thematic threads together
and read the material in the light of musical experimentation.

Kairos i n Mus i c : ac ti ng i n th e MoMen t oF n oW

For the Ancient Greeks, contingency is part of life. It is even a fertile ground
for action. Changing contexts, aims, trajectories, and situations require new
choices, decisions, and ad hoc reflection. Choices can never be settled, can
never rest on facts and principles. However, humans, situated in place and
time, in context and networks, have to make decisions. Every decision, every
commitment, is specific and particular, context-linked. Moreover, decisions
and choices, analyses and commitments, have to be made at the right moment,
at the opportune time, the kairos. Because, once made, the choices are irre-
versible and will lead to further, different moments of kairos in which to act
and intervene (Coessens 2009). Whether a composed structure or an improv-
isation, a performer always has to make the music “work.” The flow of musical
time affords the possibility to reconstruct the past: to turn previous mistakes
into new material, allowing them to introduce a novel course. Also, we can
bend our ears to a critical listening in which our imagination may create new
and contrary directions in the musical current. These moments of choice come
to the fore in a composition such as Richard Karpen’s Strandlines. The outcome
of the working session discussed above was a thirty-minute composition for
guitar and electronics that has no score, apart from the chart of the five tunings.

321
 Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

In any performance of the piece, a series of materials and processes should be

activated, but the acute moment in which this should take place is not defined
and the interaction between the guitar part and the live electronics needs to be
individually shaped in every instance. This is how the composer describes the
making of the composition:

While this kind of experientially developed music has existed in many cultures, I’m
drawn to the kinds of techniques that film director Mike Leigh uses for character
development in his films. Leigh works with his actors to create their characters
through an organic and rigorous series of directed improvisation and reiteration
until the actors fully embody their characters, their utterances, and the relationships
between all of the interacting characters and situations within the environment of
the work. Through this process the film becomes its own screenplay. In the case of
my own explorations in this mode of composing, the piece of music will itself also be
the score. The piece is documented using video recordings of a performance along
with instructions and demonstrations showing how to play it. This video document
takes the place of a musical score so that the integrity of the work can be maintained
over time and the work can be performed by other performers as well. (Karpen
2007b)

Just as the making of the piece took shape through real-time interactions
between composer, performer, instrument, and the live-electronics, each
instance of the piece is built in the moment, in the continuous shaping of a
sequence of now-moments, a specific experience of time that has no relevant
description in the English language.
Kairos is an Ancient Greek notion of time that indeed has disappeared from
our vocabulary. It originated in two practice-based arts in which preparation
and know-how had to mesh with precision, reflection, performance, and pro-
cess: archery and the art of weaving. As Eric Charles White wrote in 1987 about
kairos:

In archery, it refers to an opening, or “opportunity” or, more precisely, a long tunnel-

like aperture through which the archer’s arrow has to pass. Successful passage of a
kairos requires, therefore, that the archer’s arrow be fired not only accurately but
with enough power for it to penetrate. The second meaning of kairos traces to the
art of weaving. There it is “the critical time” when the weaver must draw the yarn
through a gap that momentarily opens in the warp of the cloth being woven. Putting
the two meanings together, one might understand kairos to refer to a passing instant
when an opening appears which must be driven through with force if success is to be
achieved. (White 1987, 13)

According to Sipiora and Baumlin (2002), the earliest notion of kairos appears
in Homer’s Iliad and refers to the body and its physical vulnerability in strug-
gle with the enemy. Later on, in tragedies, there is a shift from the locus of
mortal risk to the moment of decision itself, and thus to vital decision. In
Hesiod’s works, it becomes associated with measure and proportion in the
practice of life. As such, it anticipates the complex situational meanings of
the classical Greek concept of kairos, where human decision has to cope with
constraints and the risk of time, place, and the other. Aristotle considered the

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 Kairos in the Flow of Musical Intuition

kairos as the propitious decision, made in an individual and concrete dynamic

situation.
The kairos is an opening moment where a question and possible answers
conflate, a moment of urgent decision. The artist, by entering the public world,
by choosing to perform in particular and never equal situations, to affront and
persuade an ever-changing audience, is confronted with his or her responsi-
bility and vulnerability. The artist has a self-conscious relation with his or her
techne—artistic expertise—and its contours, the web of artistic practice (See
Coessens’s “The Web of Artistic Practice: A Background for Experimentation,”
in this volume). But the know-how of the artist, considered as the broader web
of artistic practice, and refined into a specific preparation, must be met by a
“know-when,” an acute attention and alert intervention. Every artistic decision
in the musical creation, every commitment is specific and particular, thus con-
text-linked. There is both a need and an opportunity to interfere, play with,
and react to the present circumstances in an appropriate manner: to seize the
moment, like the archer and the weaver.

i ntui ti o n i n Mus i c : M er gi n g perc eptio n an d reFlec tio n

Intuition in our understanding of musical structures emerges through an inter-

action between sense perception and analytical thinking, argues Mark DeBellis
(2009). This interaction takes place not only in the inner listening that charac-
terises the silent reading (and writing) of a score but also in concrete listening,
when performing or composing in an electronic music studio. What we per-
ceive is not the unmediated projection of an ideal musical structure, rather,
“intuition is an active process, more plausibly understood as one that brings
structured percepts into existence than as the inspection of a structure already
present” (ibid., 125). Intuition partakes in an exchange of inside and outside,
imagination and perception, knowledge and action, opening a potential field
of interaction.
In The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception ([1979] 1986) James Gibson dis-
cusses the relationship between imagining and perceiving. The difference
between these two categories is not on a philosophical or theoretical level.
Imagined and perceived “objects” are perceptually different:

An imaginary object can undergo an imaginary scrutiny, no doubt, but you are not
going to discover a new and surprising feature of the object this way. For it is the
very features of the object that your perceptual system has already picked up that
constitute your ability to visualize it. The most decisive test for reality is whether
you can discover new features and details by the act of scrutiny. Can you obtain new
stimulation and extract new information from it? Is the information inexhaustible?
Is there more to be seen? The imaginary scrutiny of an imaginary entity cannot pass
this test. (Gibson 1986, 257)

Interestingly, Gibson uses the notion of “the act of scrutiny,” thus stressing the
active element. Take for example “inner-hearing”: it is fundamentally based on
analytical processes and inner imagination but at the same time relies upon

323
 Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

practice-based skills (Östersjö, 2008), such as relative pitch and the ability to
internalise musical sound issues from our physical musical skills of singing and
playing. In other words, we must bear in mind the difference between this kind
of “secondary perception” or “imaginary” listening or music creation and con-
crete listening or music creation. Perhaps musical intuition could be under-
stood in a similar manner.
Returning to the music experience that opened this text, one may say that
it reflects the conception of intuition that is “informed.” Intuition clearly can
be understood, not as introspection of naive perception, but as knowledge or
expertise-led perceptual judgement—what DeBellis calls “theory-laden” per-
ceptual judgement (DeBellis 2009, 126). Such a perceptual judgement, both
intuitive and informed, pops up in creative sessions such as these. The deci-
sions can at first seem decisive, but can also then be re-evaluated in the face
of new knowledge or in the light of deeper expertise, as the further develop-
ment of that Strandlines session proved: the “bricolage” has sometimes to be
rearranged, the decisions retaken—when possible. A discernment surfaces
between an “imaginary” music conception and its concrete realisation.
Let’s consider the example a bit further. When continuing the collaborative
session, the two musicians took the range of the different strings into account
along with the tuning they had in the fourth scordatura, and decided to allow
for a slightly modified order by exchanging the sixth and seventh harmonics
in the chord. At this moment, both were interrupted by Josh Parmenter (the
technician developing the electronics with Richard), who was working on
an accelerometer in the same room—a sensor that could be used to modify
open chords by way of changing hand positions that they had set out to try in
another section of the piece. After this, for some reason, they turned to the
fourth movement. Only after trying the electronics in that section did they get
back to the notation of the last scordatura. Richard quickly looked at the scheme
saying that the three last notes should be G♯, A♯, and B♮. Neither of the musi-
cians reacted to or commented on the fact that the B♮ is not the tenth har-
monic in the series. Had they followed the scheme, the sixth and the first string
would have been the same B♯, hence an octave between the outer strings as in
a normal tuning of the instrument. Regarded from a scholarly point of view,
Richard’s mistake—and the fact that Stefan did not correct him (seemingly
uninterested that the tenth harmonic is a B♯)—is quite exceptional. In this
clip there is a long sequence in which Richard stared towards the music stand
while Stefan began to tune the lowest strings to the new tuning. This gave the
impression that he might be taking a considered decision to deviate from the
harmonic series, but in a later email conversation about this Richard concluded
that the B♮ is a “mistake,” in the sense that he was at that moment unaware of
deviating from the series but that it was an intentional musical choice from him
as a “composer”:

324
 Kairos in the Flow of Musical Intuition

So, watching the video, I think that the B was a mistake but one based on wishful
thinking (having the B on top with the C on the bottom and also representing the
minor third of G♯) and then post-rationalising. Not the first time that a mistake has
led to the right answer!!

Interestingly, one pragmatic exception, which made them swap harmonics six
and seven, and one miscalculation (combined with compositional intuition),
which gave the B♮ on the top string, resulted in the fifth scordatura (see Figure
8). But what is the nature of this interaction with musical materials and men-
tal processes, which in this example is the fabric from which musical intuition
seems to emerge?

Fig. 1

Merleau-Ponty considers touch as the pivotal point, the interplay between

action and perception. When touch involves the two hands as well as an exterior
object, the two hands are both touching and being touched, reaching inside
outside and outside inside: “If I touch with my left hand my right hand while it
touches an object, the right hand object is not the right hand touching: the first
is an intertwining of bones, muscles and flesh bearing down on a point in space,
the second traverses space as a rocket in order to discover the exterior object in
its place” (Merleau-Ponty [1962] 2002, 92). If we consider this in the action of a
musician, a sonorous event results from the touch of the player’s hands, from
the particular resistance of a certain musical instrument and in resonance with
a certain space. The result is both movement in space and time, and motion as
active perception. The action-perception or resistance-resonance loops at play
in musical performance interact in a way similar to that of the touching hands:
for the performer it is not really possible to distinguish between being in the
world as performing and being in the world as listening.

325

Figure 1: A scheme of the first ten overtones in the harmonic series on G♯. Note the cross-
ing of harmonics six and seven and, most of all, the mistaken B♮ instead of the B♯, which
should have been the tuning of the highest string.
 Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

This multi-modal kind of listening could be described as a resonant mode

of being, but not one in which the resistance of the instrument is neutralised.
Instead it is a matter of resonance with the instrument, the space, and one’s
own body, as suggested by Jean-Luc Nancy’s discussion of musical listening: “It
is a question, then, of going back from the phenomenological subject, an inten-
tional line of sight, to a resonant subject, an intensive spacing of a rebound that
does not end in any return to self without immediately relaunching, as an echo,
a call to that same self ” (Nancy 2007, 21). This notion of intuition as an exten-
sion of the self, of the space and time of the here and now was first expressed
by Henri Bergson ([1912] 1991, 145): “It is, then, of the essence of our actual per-
ception, inasmuch as it is extended, to be always only a content in relation to
a vaster, even an unlimited, experience which contains it; and this experience,
absent from our consciousness, since it spreads beyond the perceived horizon,
nevertheless appears to be actually given.” The confrontation with an extended
horizon in the moment of musical creation makes a perceptual leap possible
from the self to the environment. But this leap is not a movement outside the
self but a dialogical interaction with the surroundings: “the objects which sur-
round us represent, in varying degrees, an action which we can accomplish
upon things or which we must experience from them” (ibid.).
Bergson’s intuitive approach to perception is elaborated in Gibson’s theory
of the perceptual system. Though mainly concerned with vision, cognition is
here the result of the active involvement of a human being. The environment
affords different things in different ways to different perceiving organisms: for
instance, a lake may afford swimming to a human while affording support for
a bug.
However the potential has to be detected and acted upon by the perceiver.
But this is equally true (and more interesting) on a finer level: a tuning affords
different musical possibilities for different performers, hence, the affordances of
a tuning are dependent as much on the individual performer as on the actual
tuning and acoustic properties of the instrument. As the example shows, the
affordances of a particular tuning emerge in the interaction between a musi-
cian and the instrument. The complexity of these processes is due to the mul-
ti-modal nature of musical listening—perception—and its orchestration in
the bodily action of performance—action.

c o nc lus i o n
The manner in which Karpen took decisions on the basis of his own mistaken
calculation of the overtone series offers a strong example of musical intuition,
combined with a moment of kairos, a decision in the moment, of how to give
shape to this particular tuning. The B♮ contributes to one of the most striking
characteristics of the final chord and of the melodies that emerge from the nat-
ural harmonics. This example shows how kairos can be understood as the mak-
ing of right decisions, backed by “informed” intuition, on imperfect materials,
and indeed sometimes even on “incorrect” grounds.

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 Kairos in the Flow of Musical Intuition

The performer moves and is moved—think of emotion—while soundwaves

are moving. The performer as a “resonant subject” is immersed in the sonic
event, both touching and being touched by the hands, the ears, and the body
in the sounding space, but at the same time also involved in processes of musi-
cal interpretation that oscillate between analytical and tacit cognition. Just as
the “resonance” between an instrument and the musician’s body mirrors the
touching hands, the affordances of a musical material are also experienced by
the composer as a resonant subject in the ongoing musical dialogue, emerg-
ing from the particular interaction between analytic thinking and perception,
which is the basis for the flow of musical intuition.

References
Bergson, Henri. (1912) 1991. Matter and Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (1962) 2002.
Memory. Translated by Nancy Margaret Phenomenology of Perception. Translated
Paul and W. Scott Palmer. New York: Zone by Colin Smith. London: Routledge.
Books. First published 1896 as Matière Merleau-Ponty’s text first published
at Mémoire: Essai sur la relation du corps à 1945 as Phénomènologie de la perception
l’esprit (Paris: F. Alcan). This translation (Paris: Gallimard). This translation first
first published 1912 (London: George published 1962 (London: Routledge &
Allen; New York: Macmillan). Kegan Paul).
Coessens, Kathleen (2009). “Musical Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2007. Listening. Translated
Performance and ‘Kairos’: Exploring the by Charlotte Mandell. New York:
Time and Space of Artistic Resonance.” Fordham University Press. First
International Review of the Aesthetics and published 2002 as A l’écoute (Paris:
Sociology of Music 40 (2): 269–81. Éditions Galilée).
DeBellis, Mark. (2009). “Perceptualism, Not Östersjö, Stefan. 2008. Shut Up ’n’ Play!
Introspectionism: The Interpretation Negotiating the Musical Work. Doctoral
of Intuition-Based Theories.” Music Studies and Research in Fine and
Perception 27 (2): 121–30. Performing Arts 5. Lund: Lund
Gibson, James J. (1979) 1986. The Ecological University; Malmö: Malmö Academy of
Approach to Visual Perception. Hillsdale, NJ: Music.
L EA. First published 1979 (Boston, MA: Östersjö, Stefan. 2010, Strandlines, CD-
Houghton Mifflin). recording, Malmö, dB Productions
Karpen, Richard (2007a), Strandlines. Sipiora, Philip, and James S. Baumlin. 2002.
Unpublished musical work. Rhetoric and Kairos: Essays in History, Theory,
Karpen, Richard. (2007b), Unpublished and Praxis. Albany: State University of
program note. New York Press.
White, Eric Charles. 1987. Kaironomia: On
the Will-to-Invent. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.

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 Habitus and the Resistance
of Culture
Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö
Orpheus Research Centre in Music

i ntr o duc ti o n
Musical performance demands the re-enactment of previously imprinted and
embodied expert practices. These embodied schemata structure perception,
thought, action, and communication and can be adapted and re-coordinated
in specific situations. They function as frames of how to behave and, act in, and
interfere with the outer world. Aristotle, Marcel Mauss, and Pierre Bourdieu
named these practices the habitus: a general, mainly tacitly and socially acquired
whole of embodied patterns for action and behaviour—how to sleep, how to
eat, how to play, how to be a man or a woman.1
Artists, as other people do, develop their activities and interests within a
broader cultural context and thus acquire habitus proper to their society.
Different activities and processes of knowledge and specialisation lead to a
specific discipline- and culture-related habitus. An artist will over time acquire
an artist’s expert habitus: a whole of specific action and interpretation pat-
terns that combine embodied schemata and artistic expert know-how handed
down by the prevailing cultural context (Coessens 2011). Since artists move in
different ecological and cultural artistic domains or communities, they will
consciously and unconsciously, in implicit and explicit ways, negotiate from
their own artistic domain the space of techniques, interpretational styles, and
knowledge.
While an artistic habitus enriches the expertise and the potential of the artist,
it also implicates a space of resistance, be it between the musician’s acts and the
encountered materials or between the musician’s acts and the cultural space
with which he or she interacts. Therefore, the performer’s expert habitus will
be reshaped by the experiences of different situated instances. First, there is
always the impact of the artistic material environment. Artists have to adjust
themselves ecologically: space, perception, and materials linked to the exper-
tise can resist or, on the contrary, enforce certain habits. Second, there is always

1 Video illustrations from Inside/Outside and IDIOMS relevant to this article are accessible online at
http://www.orpheusinstituut.be/anthology/repository.

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 Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

also the impact of culture. In today’s globalised cultural communities, clashes

between traditions have become everyday challenges for many artists.
After an elaboration of the notion and dynamics of an artistic logic of prac-
tice and its relation to society and the body, we will analyse specific examples
of how the habitus of individual artists both shapes and is transformed by the
interaction between performers and materials, performers and their bodies,
and performers and the musical cultures from which they originate.
The observations of our own artistic practices in two projects—Inside/Outside
and IDIOMS—offer practice-based studies of these theoretical assumptions.
Both projects confront materials and culture and require the participating art-
ists to negotiate meaning and relevant practice in specifically designed exper-
imental scenarios.
Inside/Outside is an installation and performance work that questions tra-
ditional Vietnamese music today from a gender perspective, building on an
analysis of gesture in the performance of traditional Vietnamese music in TV
shows. In the piece, the three musicians of the Vietnamese/Swedish group the
Six Tones make a choreographed performance in glass boxes.
IDIOMS is an experimental music theatre project developed in workshops
with actors and musicians from the United States, Vietnam, and Sweden. The
director and playwright was Jörgen Dahlqvist and the music was developed with
the composer Richard Karpen. The spoken, recited, and sung materials are in
Vietnamese, Swedish, and English. They are a synthesis of three classic stories
of impossible love across cultures and social barriers: Marguerite Duras’s The
Lover, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and the Vietnamese tale of Mỵ Châu and
Trọng Thủy.2 The different traditions that the actors represent provide a wide
range of expression spanning spoken theatrical and vocal traditions from Asia
and the United States. We will argue that a space of intercultural musical exper-
imentation emerges that tends to challenge the habitus, bringing out the resist-
ance of materials, the body, and culture. In the process of musical experimenta-
tion, we suggest that the denial of habit (Lachenmann 2004), or a specific kind
of “compositional” critique (Östersjö 2013), is an essential component.

t r ac i ng th e c o n c epts o F h abitu s an d h exis

The social concept of habitus can be traced back to Aristotle’s hexis in the
Nicomachean Ethics. Humans are not only born with natural dispositions they
also acquire additional cultural dispositions through repeated experiential

2 The legend of Tr ong

. Thuy ’ and M y. Châu depicts a conflict between families similar to that in Romeo and
Juliet, though set also on the level of aggression between nations. Tr ong ’ the son of the Chinese
. Thuy,
general Triêu. Ñà, was sent as an emissary to Vietnam and there married M y. Châu, the only daughter of
the king of Vietnam, An Du’o’ng Vu’o’ng. The king had a magic weapon, which M y. Châu showed to her
husband. He in turn stole the magic bow and this led to the fall of the Cô’ Loa fortress. In the legend,
An Du’o’ng Vu’o’ng fled with his daughter, not knowing that she had been the one to reveal the secret
of the magic bow. However, once he had ridden to the sea, a giant golden turtle told him, “The enemy
is sitting right behind you!”—accordingly, he killed M y. Châu. Prince Tr ong
. Thuy’ arrived immediately
afterwards, and when he found the body of his beloved wife he drew his sword and killed himself to be
with her forever in eternity.

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 Habitus and the Resistance of Culture

processes of acting, learning, and habituation (Aristotle [1934] 2003, 16–26

[1130a]). The Aristotelian notion of hexis exceeds the strict notion of behaviour
and action patterns since it includes both moral actions and practical skills.
Virtue and practice merge as the qualities of action depend upon the actor’s
excellence: deed and doer merge in action based on practice and ethics. Good
and beautiful actions are therefore not sporadic or accidental products; they
are “the result of the integration of deeply embodied, acquired and reflected
dispositions—skill, knowledge and considered choice” (Coessens 2011, 3).
Later, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Marcel Mauss took up the
concept of habitus (the Latin equivalent to the Greek hexis). In “Techniques du
Corps,” he developed an extensive classification of bodily techniques embed-
ded in social and cultural patterns of action and thought (Mauss 1999). Three
interrelated domains are at the heart of his concept of habitus: the biologi-
cal, the psychological, and the social. However, he mostly discusses the social
aspects of habitus: society imprints upon individuals specific embodied pat-
terns in often-unconscious ways—through training, education, and mimesis.
Positive rewards and success will define the tendency of individuals to prefer
certain ways of doing to others (Coessens 2011, 3). By describing a wealth of
examples of culturally defined embodied ways of walking, eating, and sleep-
ing, Mauss proves that the cultural impact of preferences is primordial in what
humans often consider “natural” behaviour.
In the second half of the twentieth century, Bourdieu developed a more com-
plex theory of habitus, embedded tacitly in the social structures of societies.
Habitus here refers to a bundle of dispositions acquired through socialisation
processes and consisting of transmitted, structured and structuring, generat-
ing principles, and organisational schemes of practice and representations.
Bourdieu stresses how tacitly-transmitted embodied schemes and patterns
are handed down in imperceptible social ways: the habitus is the product of
mostly unintended, nonconscious input through the conditions of existence or
through the strategic intentions of other humans—for example, pedagogical
action—which themselves are parts of the conditions of existence (Bourdieu
1980, 102). Cultural patterns steered by tradition and social relations have an
impact on the formation of the habitus. Social order imposes itself on the body;
it compels the body to act in this or that particular way, depending on time,
space, circumstances, the others. In an often indiscernible way, habituated,
embodied, and social practices merge: the personal and the social parts unite
in bodily practices and behavioural patterns. The collective dimension of the
habitus depends upon a shared embodied history and offers a guide for action
and practical embodied knowledge: how to behave, how to interpret the human
world, how to evaluate taste and success (Mounier 2001, 46). The embodied
manifestation of the habitus is what Bourdieu calls the hexis. A logic of practice
imposes itself as a social logic, most of the time by way of imperceptible and
unconscious influences, but partly imposed by strategic actions—for example,
educational or juridical actions. Then Bourdieu analyses the further refine-
ment of the habitus, by considering different social spaces, using the notion
of “field.” Complex societies, where social and functional differentiation and

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 Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

professional specialisation develop, divide into diverse fields—for example,

the field of academics, or of masons, or of writers (Bourdieu 2000). Defined by
its socially functional activity, a field is constituted by forces such as legitimacy
and identity, but also by certain power relations inside the field: individuals
enter into competitive relations with one another, creating a strong commit-
ment to and solidarity within their field. The field constitutes the objective
conditions—the environment—for the habitus (Mounier 2001, 55–59).
Artists develop their activities and interests inside a field constituted by cre-
ative artistic and cultural techniques and knowledge. Artists will, consciously
or unconsciously, in implicit and explicit ways, take in the embodied patterns,
interpretational styles, and different types of knowledge proper to their own
artistic domain. Different cultural contexts will constitute different artistic
fields, containing certain qualities and characteristics, ideas, behaviours and
appearances, attitudes and dispositions, power relations, and aesthetic con-
cerns embedded in a tradition of education. Different artistic schools and cur-
rents, the availability of artefacts and performances, and the contact with cer-
tain “masters” and pedagogues will influence the musician’s actions and offer a
basis for cognitive and motivational structures, kinaesthetic and aesthetic pat-
terns, and durable and adapted dispositions, within the limits of socio-historic
conditions. The artist will, implicitly and explicitly, develop an artist’s habitus
in which socially acquired embodied schemata and artistic expert know-how
are combined, which “tends to favour experiences likely to reinforce it. . . . to
protect itself from crises and critical challenges by providing itself with a milieu
to which it is as pre-adapted as possible” (Bourdieu 1990, 61). Such an artis-
tic habitus offers not only a social position inside the field—the acceptance
of the status of artist—but also a broad range of embodied patterns that can
be applied in rehearsal and performance, containing things to do or not do,
perform or not perform, show and not show in the moment of artistic action.
We will argue that a distinction different to the one made by Bourdieu between
habitus and hexis is essential for developing an understanding of these artistic
processes.
The artistic habitus is inscribed in corporeal experiences of excellence, in
a hexis. In performance, a hexis rather than a habitus appears, sustained in
the background by a broader habitus. The Greek hexis contains both techné—
embodied techniques and skill—as well as ethos, the virtuous relation to one’s
acts. Hexis is a disposition of the body toward the outer world that is related
to artistic virtue by way of purposeful training and perseverance instead of
by everyday social and cultural influence and imposition: “Hexis is a special
sort of disposition, which is itself a quality: it is special by being especially well
entrenched in the thing of which it is a hexis. A hexis is either an excellence or
an aberration; an excellence is a hexis which is a perfection, and something is
perfect when it is most in accordance with its nature” (Hutchinson 1986, 5).
For the musician then, hexis is constitutive of artistic choice, reflection, and
action. The artistic virtue that is embodied in the musician’s hexis is reflective
of a broader aesthetic context and one’s (artistic) goals in life and as such is an
expression of a critical relation between the two.

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Beside this attention to the social context and modelling of habitus, other
theorists in philosophy and phenomenology, such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty
and Michel Serres among others, consider the body—and the formation of
a habitus—from the perspective of its interactions with a broader ecological
environment. All living beings have inherent potentialities. The potential is
that which can be, but not necessarily will be. The realisation of these poten-
tialities depends upon the interactions with the ecological environment.
Aristotle already mentioned the inherent potentialities of objects and living
beings, which can be realised if certain conditions prevail and interactions hap-
pen. Theories of perception such as Gibson’s have refined this notion of poten-
tiality in the ecological turn in psychology, claiming the idea of affordances.
Affordances are what an organism, an object, or a material can offer to other
organisms: features that can or will be used by other organisms. Hence, a lake
affords walking for a bug but swimming for a human who has learnt to swim.
Taking the example of a musician, an instrument affords different musical pos-
sibilities to different performers; hence, the affordances of an instrument are as
dependent on the individual performer as on the acoustic properties of the
instrument. There is an exchange of the affordances of the instrument and the
affordances of the human’s perceptual capacities. Merleau-Ponty offers us the
metaphor of the blind man’s stick: “The blind man’s stick has ceased to be an
object for him, and is no longer perceived for itself; its point has become an area
of sensitivity, extending the scope and radius of touch, and providing a parallel
to sight” (Merleau-Ponty [1962] 2002, 167). The stick is an external object that
becomes incorporated when it is mastered. However, we could question who
incorporates whom, or what incorporates what. Thinking of Michel Serres’s
notion of metamorphosis, the human body is flexible and moulds toward its
environment. He offers two examples, which show the range of possibilities of
adapting and transforming in relation to the self and the world: the ploughman
and the alpinist. While the ploughman will mould his body once and for all to
the plough in a shared interaction with the resisting soil, the alpinist will have
to adapt again and again to unexpected surfaces. The first will repeat his or her
actions with almost no change, the second will need to vary and redirect his or
her actions over a great range of possibilities (Serres 1999, 18–21).
Merleau-Ponty’s metaphor describes rather simple tools, while Serres’s exam-
ples bring the complexity of embodied adaptation and flexibility to the fore.
Musical instruments do not offer the same degree of transparency present in
the examples of the blind man’s stick or the farmer’s ploughing. Nevertheless,
they are rather similar to the alpinist, sharing the need for strong agency,
because of unexpectedness and variation. The affordances of the instrument
have to encounter a bodily intelligence to realise them and discover and cope
with them. However, in all these cases a form of habitus is elaborated, acquired
as a tool for interacting with the outer world.

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h a bi tus a nd th e resistan c e oF th e Material

The instrument does not just yield passively to the desire of the musician. It is not
a blank slate waiting for an inscription. Likewise, the musician does not just turn
the instrument to his own ends, bending it to his will against whatever resistance
it offers. Rather musician and instrument meet, each drawing the other out of its
native territory. (Evens 2005, 161)

While it seems that an artistic habitus develops from a positive, adaptive action
between actor and material agents, we often forget the challenge and diffi-
culties offered in the encounter between instrument and musician. A musical
instrument is a tough tool in the production of musical content. So is a musical
score. The notion of the “resistance” of the instrument seems to be more pow-
erful than the contrary idea of the transparency of mediating tools put forth by
Merleau-Ponty. The search for musical content, for a resonating interaction,
does not result from the incorporation of the instrument as a transparent tool,
but rather from the affirmation of its resistance, which it amplifies and plays
with.
In a discussion on Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata, Jerrold Levinson
emphasises how the idiomatic properties of the “Hammerklavier” contribute
to its identity as a musical work:

The aesthetic qualities of the Hammerklavier Sonata depend in part on the strain
that its sound structure imposes on the sonic capabilities of the piano; if we are not
hearing its sound structure as produced by a piano, then we are not sensing this
strain, and thus our assessment of aesthetic content is altered. The closing passages
of the Hammerklavier are awesome in part because we seem to hear the piano
bursting at the seams and its keyboard on the verge of exhaustion. On a 10-octave
electronic synthesizer those passages do not have quite that quality, and a hearing
of them with knowledge of source is an aesthetically different experience. (Levinson
1980, 17–18)

At work in this description are resistances of two kinds of materials: on the

one hand the instrument, on the other the score. When Levinson speaks of the
“strain” that the structures of the “Hammerklavier” Sonata impose on the piano
(and one could add, the even greater strain put on the pianos of Beethoven’s
own time), he comes close to an explication of what is involved in the interac-
tion between the instrument, the score, and a performer. The instrument in
this process offers, according to Aden Evens, its “resistance.” The way in which
a performer integrates the score and the instrument is not simply a develop-
ment of strategies to overcome this resistance. It is a more continual learning
of how to “play” the dynamics of its resistances, creating traces of significance by
way of this friction between the “grain of the voice” of the instrument and the
physicality of musical performance (Evens 2005, 160–61). Levinson reminds us
of another aspect of the resistance of the instrument in relation to the score:
the relativity of virtuoso writing. A musical structure, such as, for instance,
Paganini’s Caprice op. 1, no. 17, may be regarded as breathtakingly virtuosic

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on the violin; however, if it is instead played on a synthesiser set to a synthe-

sised violin sound, it will generate a superficially similar sonic event, but one
that projects nothing of this virtuosity in performance to a listener. Virtuosity
emerges in the interplay between a performer, a score, and a musical instru-
ment, but the significance of the more subtle levels of a performer’s interaction
with musical material reaches into the finest components of the performance:
the significance of different fingerings, the movements of the hands, the press-
ing of keys, all the physical properties of the balance between a performer’s
technique and the “resistance” of the instrument. All these fine-grained phys-
ical properties of a work affect the rendering of the musical structures on the
micro and the macro level.
However, the significance of different fingerings, the movements of the
hands, the pressing of keys, and all the physical properties of the balance
between a performer’s technique and the instrument refer also to another
“resistant” material, that of the human body.
A fine-tuning between the potential of the body and its expert artistic hab-
itus is needed to fill in the concrete demands of a score by way of a specific
instrument. Nevertheless, there are limits where the body can become a place
of resistance that need to be taken into account. Indeed, it takes a while before a
pianist can play Chopin’s études or a cellist can play Bach’s suites; it takes hours
of practice and hard labour to adapt the body and the fingers to instruments
that are not so ergonomically devised or movements, velocities, and positions
that are not very naturally inclined. Even if the two are rarely compared, musi-
cians resemble athletes—in training and techniques as well as because both
are attributed levels of excellence and participate in competitions: ever better,
always with the aim to go higher and faster, with no errors allowed (Coessens
2011, 2). The practical and embodied conditions required for performing high-
level musical activity form a dense web of techniques and skills, often acquired
laboriously or at least over a long period. The artist possesses then an artistic
habitus of high technical and athletic quality.
It can be difficult to spot the resistance of the body in the practice of a pro-
fessional performer since the habitus of the player has, often since childhood,
incorporated strategies to tackle it, perhaps making it transparent like the
blind man’s stick in Merleau-Ponty’s example. Fluency and apparent ease is
part of the expert habitus of the musician. However, certain performance situ-
ations can force a resistance toward that ease, a resistance that becomes then
part of the creation.
This notion of resistance is at work in the recent installation project
Inside/Outside, in which Stefan Östersjö was required to perform traditional
Vietnamese music in queen costume—alluding to traditional Vietnamese
theatre conventions. In this piece, the movements of the three musicians of
the group the Six Tones were directed by the Swedish choreographer Marie
Fahlin. In many instances in this piece, the resistance of the body received a
more outspoken role—for instance in a solo that Östersjö played. In it, he was
standing, holding the tỳ bà (Vietnamese four stringed lute). This is already in
itself an awkward playing position: although visually powerful—holding the

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 Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

instrument in this way alludes to traditional paintings of women playing the

lute—playing the instrument in this way is difficult because when held upright
it has a constant tendency to fall out of one’s hands. But, most of all, the solo
involved a constant turning movement and the musical material was shaped
according to the speed and direction of the turns. It became very obvious how
the footwork came to shape the musical form of the entire solo, and also how,
in the first days of rehearsal, this physical movement totally outside the habitus
of a classical performer turned Östersjö’s body into a space of resistance in the
making of the piece.3
Fahlin, the choreographer, had suggested that the entire solo be imagined as
if performed by a ballerina in a music box.4 However, the rehearsal and perfor-
mance period of the installation, during which Östersjö’s movements always
had to follow female gesture types, made him realise how many years of hard
training are required to walk and move like a woman. What emerged later in
the same working session was the interdependence of movement and music:
how “winding up” and “releasing” the ballerina shaped the music in accord-
ance with these movements, and vice versa.5 Imperfections in the turning
movement and the timing of when to start “unwinding” the mechanism imme-
diately affected the ongoing music.
As Mauss mentions, mechanical, physical acts and adaptations are sustained
by education, by values placed on behaviour and learning, by the space they
receive in society, and finally by how these social representations take form
in the mind and body of the individual. Societies have habits and traditions
that educate youngsters toward musicianship, taking at least a ten-year period
of instruction to mould body and acts, often sustained by deeply entrenched
master-pupil relations, and following a traditional curriculum of stages, levels,
and judgements. Moreover, the lifelong attribution of levels and honours and
the continual judgement and critique by professionals and laypersons of public
performances reinforce the musician’s interwoven triad of personal and psy-
chological traits, bodily techniques, and social representations (Coessens 2011,
6–7).

iDiomS a nd th e resistan c e o F c u ltu re

In October 2010 the Six Tones and Teatr Weimar held auditions in Hanoi to
find an actor from traditional theatre who would join the project IDIOMS.6
They met actors from all three main traditions of theatre in Vietnam and even-

3 In the first video clip we can observe Östersjö’s first attempts to realise a turning movement inside the
box.
4 Looking at Östersjö’s feet in this video, it becomes apparent that becoming a ballerina is not achieved
overnight.
5 In Clip 2, taken from one of the performances of the piece, one can observe how in several instances
Östersjö’s playing is interrupted by a lack of fluency in the turning movement.
6 Teatr Weimar is one of Sweden’s leading independent theatre companies and consists of playwrights,
directors, and set designers. IDIOMS was produced in collaboration between Teatr Weimar, Ensemble
Ars Nova (within which the Six Tones is a subproject) and DXARTS, Seattle. Stefan Östersjö is both a
performer with the Six Tones and the artistic director of Ensemble Ars Nova.

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 Habitus and the Resistance of Culture

tually settled for working with Nguyễn Đức Mạnh, a renowned actor from the
Tuồng theatre in Hanoi. A day later, they all met for a workshop. When the ses-
sion began, Mạnh was performing in everyday clothing. He suggested several
times that it would be better also to look at his performance of the material in
traditional costume. All the Westerners in the session were surprised by how
significantly his acting changed when in costume.
This example shows how, for a musician, habituated, embodied, and social
practices of creating music merge into a performer’s identity that is both
personal and cultural: it becomes quite impossible to separate personal bod-
ily artistic practices from social artistic patterns, and vice versa. The habitus
results in an embodied knowledge of how to play, create, perform, understand,
and think about the aesthetic world of sound.
However, this habitus can itself become a point of resistance toward novelty,
toward the realisation of creative, experimental performance and composition.
If we understand habit as dwelling comfortably and thoughtlessly in a socially
defined and secure aesthetic space (Lachenmann 2004, 56), is it therefore pos-
sible for us to encounter unexpected or original creative aspects of musical per-
ception and performance? Helmut Lachenmann uses the notion of “denial of
habit” to define beauty in musical composition. If we imagine the performer
interacting with the affordances of musical materials, there is a risk of falling
into instrumental habits—in other words, clichés. The critical perspective that
Lachenmann provides, may offer useful clues to a more general understanding
of the function of hexis in musical creation. In an aesthetic experience allow-
ing such a position on a denial of habit, the exploration of the affordances of
musical material can be understood to oscillate between an affirmative phase,
where resonance between the instrument and other musical materials are in
focus, and a critical phase of denial, where a “compositional” reading attempts
to decompose these habits. The hexis of a performer needs to be continuously
understood as a complex interplay between processes of “resonance” and
“critique” or “resistance”—a “critique” that constitutes this denial of habit in
musical performance. The critical function of the compositional phases could
also be understood as the moments when musical experimentation comes to
the fore, when the performer “com-positions” him- or herself within (“com”)
both habitus and resistance. By intentionally introducing resistant materials
into a performance, instrumental clichés can indeed be bypassed or trans-
formed. These materials can be the ordinary materials, such as instruments
and scores, or the performer’s body, as we mentioned before. Both merge with
a third kind of resistance: that of the cultural impact of the habitus itself in col-
laborative intercultural settings. This resistance, which we call cultural resist-
ance, encompasses both previous kinds of resistance—materials and body—as
it shapes and challenges the musician’s hexis.
The cultural resistance of Tuồng-theatre traditions was one of many factors
at play in the making of IDIOMS. When one studies to be a Tuồng actor one
learns a couple of roles related to each other that reoccur in almost every play.
These characters are also deeply connected to the costume worn. Hence, in this
process, the cultural meaning of the costume in Tuồng theatre was the source

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 Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

of the resistance. When the piece was further developed in working sessions
the year after, this was one of the issues that had to be resolved, since the play
required the actor to move in and out of traditional costume. This became one
of the most essential pieces of learning on Mạnh’s side and a fundamental chal-
lenge for the director and the group of actors. Only in the working sessions
in June 2011 did the whole ensemble arrive at a solution to this problem—a
negotiation of the resistance of the respective cultures, as it were—when Mạnh
was introduced to the notion of working with “situations,” as in contemporary
Western theatre. Mạnh then found ways of imagining himself as somebody else
when wearing everyday clothes and like a traditional “hero” (he normally plays
a “young general”) when he wore his traditional costume.7
As we mentioned, Mauss stresses the importance of the threefold consolida-
tion of techniques: physical, social, and psychological. Founded on tradition
and efficacy, the corporeal dispositions—the physical—are not only acquired
by training and mimesis—the social—but also imply a psychological “momen-
tum,” an instance of confidence in its efficacy (Mauss 1999, 369). A psycholog-
ical, “magical” belief in the technique helps to ingrain the bodily act as a rele-
vant tool, even if the resistance of the material and the physical acquisition is
tough and demanding. Mạnh’s resistance from his own cultural artistic habitus
could only be bypassed by new patterns of action that didn’t conflict with his
own artistic culture. A new manifestation of an individual hexis thus emerged.
Another example of resistance between materials and culture came to the
fore when the ensemble began to shape the instrumental music in the section
moving from Mạnh’s reading through recitation to singing. During the work-
shop, the composer, Richard Karpen, was not physically in Hanoi; instead, he
communicated online over Skype. In this first session some ideas were tested
that had already emerged in the audition. This concerned ideas that consid-
ered the different modes of delivering text in Tuồng. The composer wanted
to try a possible first scene that started from reading and gradually grew into
singing. The text we worked from at this time was created by Jörgen Dahlqvist
and consisted of a deconstruction of material in Marguerite Duras’s L’Amant,
translated into (modern8) Vietnamese. Karpen suggested that the instrumental
part could start from musical structures developed in earlier sessions and then
a way could be found to create a different musical trajectory that followed the
development of the vocal part. He proposed that the đàn bầu should follow the
melody of the singing and that the tỳ bà and đàn tranh should take on a more
motoric role.

7 An eleven-minute clip from the premiere of IDIOMS represents the artistic solution of the resistance
of culture in the use of costume in Tuô`ng. We first see Manh performing in “normal” clothes (and in
normal voice), then the process of getting the costume on, followed by a sequence of traditional dance
and singing.
8 This translation into modern Vietnamese turned out to have unexpected results on a local audience in
~
Hanoi. After the first sessions with Nguyên u’c M anh,
. after which the musicians were all very excited
about his performance of the text, Östersjö played some video of it to some Vietnamese musicians. To
his endless surprise, they were not touched or impressed by the emotional power of the performance
but instead started laughing. What the Western musicians did not know was that Tuô`ng is always played
in ancient language, like Shakespeare’s English, and to hear recitation in Tuô`ng-style but in modern
language was simply comical to them.

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 Habitus and the Resistance of Culture

Since Karpen was not physically present, the interaction between all artists
was limited to the moments when all were online. Hence, there was no way
the composer and the performers could immediately negotiate the music, as
would be the normal working mode in such a project. Instead, it was agreed
that the performers would make a series of recordings that would constitute a
point of departure for the further development of the music. In the session we
made a series of attempts to record this scene, following the trajectory of the
voice from a slow almost pointillistic music that was intended to grow gradually
into a more dynamic interplay between the recitation and singing. Even in the
first take, something quite unusual happened. Thủy, a fluent improviser who
would normally not fail to contribute to building an agreed structure, became
more and more silent as the dynamic curve of the vocal part increased. A sec-
ond take was made but the same thing happened. The musicians took a break
and Östersjö asked Thủy what the matter was. She explained that she felt the
way Karpen had asked for the music to develop came close to how one would
traditionally play the accompaniment to this kind of singing but was also a bit
different, so that it would simply sound “wrong.” At first she went silent; then,
instead, she started playing totally different things using extended techniques
in ways that certainly did not match what Karpen had suggested and did not
interact so well with the rest of the ensemble. To Östersjö, it seemed necessary
to adjust the trajectory of the music to fit the demands of the Vietnamese tra-
dition as it was embodied and expressed by Thủy in this moment. Later takes
tried out ways of moving away from pitch material that followed the vocal line
too closely and avoided the kind of motoric figurations that were part of Thủy’s
“problem” with the music, thus confining a conflict that could be understood
as a clash between different cultural materials.
A performer such as Thủy acts inside a cultural world, inside an artistic field
that contains its own evaluations of cultural and symbolic capital. Bourdieu
(1979) describes how a cultural world consists of different fields, each con-
taining their own forms of power and status. These forms of power produce
capital that can be used as material and/or ideal value or status symbols. He
considers different kinds of capital: economic, social, cultural, and symbolic
capital. Cultural capital and symbolic capital are of ultimate worth for the
field of art. Cultural capital concerns explicit and tacit elements of knowledge,
educational levels, and aesthetic understanding. Symbolic capital refers to the
symbolic recognition, articulation, and legitimisation of other forms of capital,
offering power, respect, and status. Utterly defined by taste and mentality, but
also by education and skill, participants in the field of music, by way of par-
ticular lifestyles and habits and aesthetic appreciation and artistic embodied
knowledge, obtain consideration, privileges, mythical appreciation, and marks
of distinction.

Cultural capital can be subdivided into three forms: an interiorised or embod-

ied form, relating to practices of the body and aesthetic knowledge; the art
objects themselves as an objective form of cultural capital; and, finally, the
diplomas, educational degrees, prizes, and critiques of the artistic field as an

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 Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

institutionalised form. The embodied cultural capital, reflected in the diffi-

cult and demanding acquisition of the skills and techniques of performing, is
the primary tool for acceptance in the field of performers. However, there is a
need for broader acceptance in society and redefinition of the legitimacy of
the field—the institutionalised and objective aspects of cultural capital. This
happens through participation in the culturally defined trajectories of artis-
tic education and artistic output and the necessary appreciation by critics and
public. Artists therefore reproduce cultural structures in the form of durable
and adapted dispositions, doing so within the limits of socio-historical condi-
tions (Bourdieu 1980, 96).
It is clear that, for Thủy, engaging with other Western conceptions of cul-
tural capital became very difficult and even impossible. Entering the field of
music implies partaking in the appropriation of its capital but also divulging
and redefining the legitimacy of the field. Some conceptions of legitimacy were
intentionally contested by IDIOMS, which challenged, first, the Eurocentric
domination of Western musical concepts in many kinds of “world music” and,
second, the traditional power structure of Western art music, in which the
composer’s wishes and intentions govern the minds and bodies of perform-
ers. Richard Karpen entered the IDIOMS project with an awareness of these
tensions and, even more, with the intention of embracing these ambitions and
embarking on the project in a dialogical mode of working: a “com-position” of
different cultural habitus and a “denial” of deeply embodied artistic habits—or
should we say an awareness and negotiation of these.
Indeed, all the material had to be developed and shaped together with the
performers, creating a continuous space of negotiation, not only between the
composer and the performers in the working sessions but also between cul-
tural artistic assumptions and habitus. The piece was to have no score, instead
relying on these agreements and the embodied knowledge of the performers of
how the music “goes.” Hence, the making of the piece was also an experiment
that questioned not only the traditional hierarchies of Western art music but
also the role of the composer.

Negotiating the resistance of material and culture

This musical experience became a challenge. How could the tensions between
the material suggested by Karpen and the cultural resistance that Thủy sensed
be negotiated? Could there be a different dynamic that might resolve these
tensions by taking the music into a different current? In this section, we will
argue that an ethos that urges the performer to take embodied knowing into
a new domain is an expression of hexis that can, for instance, take shape as a
denial of habit.
The fate of the recordings made that day was certainly also the result of
the lack of communication with Karpen. It may well be that, had he been in
the theatre when the difficulties arose, a different dialogue would have taken
place, possibly resolving the issues at this time. However, the audio and video
material was sent over to Seattle with the intention of adding electronics to
the take. Instead—and out of Karpen’s clear frustration with the fact that the

340
 Habitus and the Resistance of Culture

instrumental music was nowhere near what he had suggested over Skype—the
editing sessions involved adding instrumental material from earlier recordings
that, for one thing, certainly did not match the playing seen in the video. When
the video was again returned, with this new after-construction of the music
added, a certain frustration spread in the entire dialogue between Karpen and
the musicians around this part of the piece. After a series of email conversa-
tions seeking a solution to the instrumental music, this problem was left until
the next sessions in Seattle.
The final solution to the instrumental music was found on the last day of
the next series of sessions, actually after playing the premiere of a music-only
version of IDIOMS,9 a version that did not include the music from this scene.
In the relaxed state after the premiere, the question of this opening scene was
brought up again and suddenly the resolution appeared, first in a suggestion
by Karpen, which actually went along the lines that Thủy was trying out in the
Hanoi sessions. Karpen looked closely at her đàn tranh and asked how chords
plucked simultaneously on both sides of the bridges would sound, a playing
technique that does not exist in traditional music—a proper “compositional”
approach in the sense of embracing a denial of habit. The sound of these chords
was strikingly novel and dramatic.10 For Thủy, this playing technique, and the
novel sonorities, allowed a way out of the resistance of culture, not by conform-
ing with but by denying expectations from tradition—and was therefore an
expression of hexis that led her playing toward a more experimental approach
to her practice. It must also be understood as a shift in her relation to cultural
capital, because this experimental approach to instrumental performance
is not part of the cultural capital of traditional Vietnamese music but part of
Western experimental practice. Just as in the negotiation of how Mạnh should
relate to the use of costume in the piece, a denial of habit became the threshold
leading to the embodiment of new skills and modes of expression. But this is
not yet a complete picture of the negotiations involved in these sessions. The
conflict in the work of Mạnh and Thủy between the cultural capital of Western
art music and of traditional Vietnamese culture is mirrored in Karpen’s role
when negotiating the music with the performers. Karpen had been brought
into a situation where the authority of the composer to contribute “original”
music in a composed work no longer remained. Instead, the music was nego-
tiated between the musicians and between the two cultures. First, the hierar-
chy between composer and performer was dissolved. Second, the identity of
the music no longer rested purely on the composer’s style of writing but relied
just as much on the idioms of traditional Vietnamese music and the individual
modes of expression of the players. Interestingly, at the premiere in Malmö,
Sweden, a group of Vietnamese immigrants came to the performance. In con-
versations after the show, several of them said they thought the music was
Vietnamese! Richard Karpen heard about these comments and decided to be

9 This version can be heard at www.youtube.com/ostersjo, where it is divided into four clips.
10 In the excerpt from IDIOMS found on the online resource (see Appendix 3), a return to this material
can be heard at approximately eleven minutes into the clip.

341
 Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

happy about this response, despite the fact that the cultural capital in which
he would normally invest implies that a composition should draw its identity
from the work of the composer alone. Hence, in the making of this composi-
tion, Karpen allowed his practice to move beyond Western culture’s traditional
expectations of a composer and instead, in a search for artistic virtue similar to
the hexis of Thủy and Manh, move toward a more experimental approach in his
interaction with the performers in the production.
Cultural and material negotiations in the field of artistic performance are
never settled because art is a continuous process of interaction. In this field of
tension, we argue that the hexis of a musician may constitute the springboard
for musical experimentation. While an artistic habitus is a culturally induced
and handed down unity of behaviour, the hexis is an embodiment of the striving
for artistic virtue and an expression of a critical relation between the complex
field of possibilities in a specific artistic context. The embodied traditions that
we represent, and the way in which they shape the cultural capital in which we
invest in every layer of our practices, make the interaction between performers
from different cultures a highly complex melting pot in which the outcome is
indeed unpredictable. The musician’s hexis constitutes an approach to musi-
cal experimentation that allows for a dynamic interaction with such diverse
materials.

References
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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1979. La distinction: Critique Lachenmann, Helmut. 2004. “Philosophy
sociale du jugement. Paris: Les Éditions of Composition: Is There Such a Thing?”
de Minuit. Translated by Richard Nice In Identity and Difference: Essays on Music,
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Harvard University Press, 1984). Albrecht Wellmer, and Richard Klein,
———. 1980. Le sens pratique. Paris: Les 55–70. Collected Writings of the Orpheus
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———. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Translated Levinson, Jerrold. 1980. “What a Musical
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First published as Bourdieu 1980. Mauss, Marcel. 1999. Sociologie et anthropologie.
———. 2000. Les structures sociales de 8th ed. Paris: PUF. First published 1950
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Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. (1962) 2002. Östersjö, Stefan. 2013. “The Resistance of

Phenomenology of Perception. Translated the Turkish Makam and the Habitus of a
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Merleau-Ponty’s text first published CD-Project with Erdem Helvacioğlu.”
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(Paris: Gallimard). This translation first 201–13.
published 1962 (London: Routledge & Serres, Michel. 1999. Variations sur le corps.
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Mounier, Pierre. 2001. Pierre Bourdieu, une Randolph Burks as Variations on the Body
introduction. Paris: Pocket. (Minneapolis, MN: Univocal, 2011).

343
 Repetition, Resonance,
and Discernment
Kathleen Coessens,
Orpheus Research Centre in Music

Henrik Frisk,
Malmö Academy of Music; Royal College of Music, Stockholm

Stefan Östersjö,
Orpheus Research Centre in Music

Intuition leads us to go beyond the state of experience

toward the conditions of experience. But these conditions
are neither general nor abstract. They are no broader than
the conditioned: they are the conditions of real experience.
—Gilles Deleuze (1988, 27)

i ntr o duc ti o n
Musical performance is an artistic manifestation consisting of action or being
enacted by the artist. At the same time, the artist is in a discerning, perceiving
situation, a situation of “resonance.” However, the potential of both discern-
ment and action is dependent upon the performer’s entire artistic background
which is the result of a patient acquisition of artistic skills and knowledge, and
upon the cultural tools at hand. The moment of kairos, the opportune time at
which these processes come together joining the intuitive knowing and the
individual skills of the performer to the clearest light is the focus of this second
article.1 We will in the present text look at several instances in the production
and performances of a composition by the Swedish composer Henrik Frisk
titled Repetition Repeats All Other Repetitions. Particular emphasis will be put on
video material from CD-recording sessions that took place with the guitarist
Stefan Östersjö at the Electronic Music Studios (EMS) in Stockholm in January
2011.

1 CD, track 3, is a complete performance of Repetition Repeats All Other Repetitions. Video illustrations
relevant to the present article are accessible online at http://www.orpheusinstituut.be/anthology/re-
pository. See also Coessens and Östersjö’s articles in the present publication.

345
 Kathleen Coessens, Henrik Frisk and Stefan Östersjö

Repetition Repeats All Other Repetitions is an open form composition for ten-
stringed guitar and electronics. It was premiered in Beijing in 2006 and has
been performed many times since then, in three separate versions. The piece
emerged out of a collaboration between composer Frisk and guitarist Östersjö,
an artistic research project in which interaction in the widest sense was allowed
to play a major part already at the outset. In the preparatory phase, and through
the first incarnations of the piece, the idea of a radically open work type, the
work-in-movement, crystallised (Eco 1989). One of the conditions that allowed
for the development of this openness was the disassembly of the hierarchies
attached to the roles of composer and performer and one of its consequences
was that intuition was allowed to play a great role in the work.
Conceptually the piece consists of three thematically distinct motives (A, B,
and C in the score2) derived by permutations of the same tone series. One of
the fundamental ideas behind the piece is that these three “characters” should
develop dynamically and interact with one another. Though it is only possible
for the guitarist to play one of these motives at a time, Frisk’s intention was, by
irregularly moving back and forth between them, and with the help of the com-
puter part, to create the illusion that all three “stories” were to be told simul-
taneously. The guitarist would merely “give light” or resonate with one version
of the story at a time. The electronic part is designed such that there is a set
of soundfiles and types of live-processing that correspond to the A, B, and C
materials of the guitar part, respectively.3
Though the score is quite detailed, the way the segments are combined is up
to the performer. So far three different versions have been produced: in the first
two the structure was settled before the performance, and for the third version,
which is the version mainly being discussed here, the choices were made inter-
actively in real time. In this version, the performer is allowed to interrupt the
segments at any place and go to another segment.

d i s c er n Ment in c o n tin u ity

Each moment of performance or instance of (collaborative) artistic creation is

situated in a broader web of artistic practice. A musical event indeed requires
from the musician a specific background: to have acquired and elaborated the
necessary cognitive and embodied patterns and trajectories that are capable of
sustaining and expressing that specific artistic act of performance. However, the
performance itself is enclosed in its own artistic time and place and is enacted
in moments of now, reaching out towards a greater whole. In the moment of
performance, the artist is absorbed in the enactment of the evolving work, from
a position of self-reflective embodiment—that level of awareness may also shift
and the involvement may at times be a subconsciously governed action. Each
gesture adds to, changes, and influences the meaning of what was before and
what comes after: movements unfold, succeed one another, and even a silence

2 A further description of the materials, both in the score and in the electronics will follow below.
3 See Frisk (2008) for a more detailed discussion of Repetition Repeats all other Repetitions.

346
 Repetition, Resonance, and Discernment

or immobility is but a tension or preparation for the embodied bound towards

the next movement or sound; no movement is ever in isolation. Inner, experi-
enced time, and spatialised, objective, analysable time merge into an embod-
ied time, the time of the unfolding movements and acts. The movements of
the body incorporate the surrounding space, linking interiority and exteriority.
Jean-Luc Nancy reminds us how listening is always a matter of sharing (Nancy
2007, 7–17). Hence, the space of the performance is also the space of the per-
former (and of the listener), the sound waves become part of the body, or the
body part of the sounding space, resonating with each other. The artist enacts
with the high perceptual and kinaesthetic sensitivity of the space, the objects,
the bodies, the atmosphere, everything that is “in touch” with his or her body,
extending the body and its unfolding gestures with the material surroundings
and objects: where the artist is and what he or she does or will do, his or her
spatial position, the material givenness and relatedness of body and space,
merge completely in the unfolding of the musical act. A liminal space of artis-
tic performance which challenges all ordinary quantitative time-space experi-
ences, or chronos-topos, emerges. It is a space of resonance, an assemblage of
the spaces of artistic practice, of preparation and of performance in one “here
and now.” This attention implies a fast-tracking of possibilities and constraints
and a fast attuning between proprioception and exteroception—between the
attitudes and processes which stir out of the inner body and mind, and their
reception of and interaction with the resonance of the outer world.
The musician’s tracking of these multiple perceptual inputs and outputs is a
complex activity that depends on both explicit and tacit awareness and knowl-
edge. There is a constant oscillation between conscious analytic thinking and
tacit, non-conceptual knowing. This last shows itself as a “know-how,” a form
of action led by intuition which can be defined as “Accumulated experience
that is not immediately accessible to language, but which does affect our con-
sciousness. . . . An intuitive choice is thus as conscious as a considered choice,
it simply uses aspects of consciousness that are not accessible to language. It
cannot say, but it can show” (Sandqvist, 2013). For Bergson, intuition is the flow
of inner and outer experience, an undivided continuity, difficult to pin down.
However, because of practical reasons, we interrupt and divide this continuity
into discernible elements or fragments:

We start from what we take to be experience, we attempt various possible

arrangements of the fragments which apparently compose it, and when at last we
feel bound to acknowledge the fragility of every edifice that we have built, we end by
giving up all effort to build. But there is a last enterprise that might be undertaken.
It would be to seek experience at its source, or rather above that decisive turn where,
taking a bias in the direction of our utility, it becomes properly human experience.
(Bergson [1912] 1991, 184)

Intuition emerges here as an inner appreciation of the conflation of the com-

plex information and interpretation through the senses, the body and the
mind, in the knowledge and experience now related to the background. Focus
and background, inner and outer experience, unite in the experience of the

347
 Kathleen Coessens, Henrik Frisk and Stefan Östersjö

body which is the material locus of complex interaction. What we are seeking is
within that experience of multiple sensations that afford indeterminate action
and yet persist (Morris 2005, 12). Returning to the introductory quotation by
Deleuze, in his early discussion of Bergson’s thinking and the contradictory
acts of intuition he pinpoints the “decisive turn” that Bergson brings up in the
quote above as a turning point. The conditions of real experience are neither
general nor abstract but allow us to go beyond the turn, beyond our own expe-
rience and allow us to see it as one, “a pure memory identical to the totality of
the past” (Deleuze 1988, 27).
The “decisive turn” can be understood as moments of kairos that allow for
intensive encounters between inside and outside, between perception and
imagination, resistance and resonance. Kairos implies the convergence of
knowing how and knowing when, the faculty of both observing and realising in
any given case the available artistic means (Atwill 1998, 59). Moments of kairos
are points of heightened awareness or explicit flashes of the implicitly present
flow of intuition that result in active responses to the space of resonance. But
these moments do not merely present themselves to the performer from the
outside nor solely from the inside: the moment of kairos is a moment of crisis,
of conflict between musical powers, it is a decisive point when a new direction
needs to be forced into the musical flow. The artist will have to cope with unex-
pected conditions that suddenly can hinder the attuning of body and space. He
or she will prevent this as much as possible, by already “sensing” or “weighing”
the space before, by preparing his or her body and its touch with that space—
relying upon intuition. The kairos of the artist concerns the faculty of coping
with the unexpected, with the particular constraints of a situation and of his or
her own act in this liminal space of performance (Coessens 2009, 276).

i ntui ti o n a n d repetitio n

The embodied knowing that constitutes the framework for musical intuition
is strongly brought to play in every performance of Repetition Repeats All Other
Repetitions. A performer who has worked through the materials of the piece—
the score and the computer-generated sound—and who has been performing
different versions of the piece in concert will create an inner field of possibil-
ities that becomes the playground for the next performance. But even if the
piece has a strong bearing on our discussion of the moment of kairos in musical
performance, there are also many instances in the collaborative work of making
the piece that point to the function of intuition in time-scales other than the
“now” in performance. We will in the following section offer some background
concerning the working process of the creation of the piece. This started in
2006 with the ambition of highlighting some intuitions that guided the work
in three periods stretching over several years.
The preparatory work on the piece involved an extended artistic research
process that included the collaborative analysis of video documentation from
Östersjö’s collaboration with another Swedish composer, Love Mangs, as well
as writing several papers and making conference presentations of that study.

348
 Repetition, Resonance, and Discernment

During this period, the casual discussions of how the new piece might take
shape were also important. We will return below to how some of those early
intuitions about the piece came to guide the entire process of making it. But
the preparatory work also involved improvisation sessions that were recorded
on audio and video and later transcribed by the composer Frisk to become part
of the score.
In the next phase, Frisk took all this material, borrowed Östersjö’s ten-string
guitar and wrote the first score to the piece. The way the score is constructed, it
builds on three distinct layers and the dynamics between them:

Motive A
The A-motive is a transcription of the first section of the first sketch for another
composition, The Six Tones, a quartet for two Vietnamese instruments, guitar/
banjo and electronics. It makes use of a range of alternate playing techniques.
The A-motive electronics make use of samples from the same Six Tones ses-
sions and are generally rather short.

Motive B
The B-motive is in essence a melody with harmony and is a combination of
what was initially thought to be two separate sections. The slow melodic move-
ments are combined with repeated chords in a dynamically varied context. The
B motive electronics were created making laptop improvisations on samples
of the chords and some of this material consists of quite long files, up to over
a minute.

Motive C
The C-material is almost entirely tapped on the fingerboard of the guitar using
both hands in complex polyrhythmic patterns. Apart from creating a timbral
texture distinct from the other two, it allows for a kind of two-line polyphony
difficult to perform when playing the guitar with standard technique. The com-
puter part is derived from physical modelling of a guitar with glass strings.

The first version of the piece has never been performed. In the first score Frisk’s
intention was to give a certain limited amount of freedom of choice in perfor-
mance; Östersjö, however, found this to be problematic and suggested a differ-
ent (and fixed instead of “open”) version for the premiere, which was to take
place in Beijing only a few weeks later.
One problem that Östersjö identified was practical: the score did not eas-
ily allow for its actual use in a concert performance because of its many pages
and the need to turn back and forth in the material according to the real-time
choices the performer should make in the course of the performance. The
other problem was the greater form, which did not appear to be convincing.
So, before leaving for Vietnam (a stop on the trip before going to China) he
had made notes in the score on how to edit the material into a different fixed
version. While in Hanoi, the score was cut into small chunks and put together
according to a formal outline that Östersjö had drawn out. The electronic part

349
 Kathleen Coessens, Henrik Frisk and Stefan Östersjö

was mapped onto these fragments following the structure of the material in
the guitar part and new electronic material was created. This version was per-
formed many times over the next two years, often in combination with the sec-
ond version that would later be produced.
In this second reading of the score, the greater form is guided by the form
of a modernist film classic, Viking Eggeling’s Symphonie Diagonale. This ver-
sion was structured by Frisk and Östersjö in joint sessions, working with an
audio recording of the first version as one of the main materials. On the basis
of Östersjö’s intuitive sense of structural affinity between the works, they devel-
oped a strategy for making this version of the piece by mapping the three main
materials of the guitar piece onto the three categories of imagery found in the
film.4 In the sketch in Figure 1 we can see one of the sheets in which Östersjö
and Frisk pencilled motives from the film and linked them to the A-material in
the composition.

Fig. 1 The third version followed. This not only expressed the composer’s original
ideas for the piece, but also reflected and finally realised intuitions composer
and performer both had concerning open form, not specifically related to the

4 For a further discussion of the making of this version we refer to the dissertations of Östersjö and Frisk
(Östersjö 2008, 306–14; Frisk 2008, 179–82). Here, pencilled drawings mapping imagery in the film to
the musical structures can be seen and a closer discussion of the collaborative compositional process
can be found. The video can be viewed at http://goo.gl/z2N18 (accessed July 29 2013).

350

Figure 1: A sketch of the graphics from the analysis of Symphonie Diagonale.

 Repetition, Resonance, and Discernment

modernist traditions of aleatoric and mobile scores but with the aim towards
working modes that grew out of their practices as musicians: .” . . our attempts
at creating a dynamic score, a framework of musical notation in which differ-
ent paths can be taken, is not implicitly related to the stylistic and esthetic
grounds of the open work in the modernist era but instead related to its impact
and operational function in machine-musician interaction today” (Frisk and
Östersjö 2006, 249). At the time of writing, the “dynamic score” referred to here
was a conceptual idea of a score that had neither a privileged reading mode
nor a beginning or end. This early intuition continued to guide the develop-
ment during the years of extensive collaborative work and eventually resulted
in a piece that, expanding Umberto Eco’s classic term, could rightly be called
a work-in-movement (1989). Though the practical realisation of the interactivity
in the technical design—including the decision to create a dynamic score that
can be controlled with a foot pedal by the performer during the performance—
took a long time, an intuitive knowing that pointed beyond the available solu-
tions and technical means at the time prevailed over the years.
After the premiere of the third version in October 2008, the further growth
of the piece up to the CD-recording session in January 2011 consisted mainly
in the collection of more experience of performing the piece, adding to the
body of accumulated knowledge from the making of the composition and the
concepts that shaped its identity.
In the following text, we will analyse in detail some of the recording sessions
with a focus on how embodied knowing creates a field of possibilities that con-
stitutes the playground for musical intuition.

Fig. 2

351

Figure 2 Performance set-up for Frisk, Repetition Repeats All Other Repetitions
 Kathleen Coessens, Henrik Frisk and Stefan Östersjö

Figure 2: The performer has two pedals, one that controls the page shown (2)
in the score (1) and one to signal a new event trigger (4) to the computer. The
computer is also informed of what page is currently showing (3). At each trigger
of pedal two the computer is making a heuristic choice of material (A, B, or C)
individually for the set of pre-prepared sounds (5) and for the bank of real-time
processing (6) based on the score page currently showing and the preceding
material.

the M oM ent o F K airo s in per Fo rMan c e

The situation of a performance offers a musician a spectrum of constraints and

possibilities. While this spectrum is rather limited in the case of a traditional
score, Repetition Repeats All Other Repetitions is more demanding, requiring from
the performer a continuous responsibility of shaping the piece. The composer
indeed offers a score that needs to be recomposed in each performance and
forces the performer to reconstruct the piece each time differently, following
the decisions made in the course of the performance. Moments of kairos are
inviting and disturbing situations where unexpectedness urges the artist to
react and decide. Repetition Repeats All Other Repetitions asks from the performer
a deep commitment and an openness, not only to react in unexpected situa-
tions, but to create unexpectedness by their own actions and to solve the suc-
ceeding disturbances. This piece embeds in itself the necessity of kairos as it
is impossible to calculate the entire range of actions, of possibilities and occa-
sions of intervention, decision and modification that can be undertaken in its
performance.
As such, every pushing of a pedal in a performance of the piece is like open-
ing up for a new question in the Gadamerian sense: a novel contribution in a
musical hermeneutic process, launching a dialogue between the musical mate-
rials and the performer. Every pedal trigger indicates a frame, opening ques-
tions and asking for a decision to be taken that will orient the course of the per-
formance. If the pedal that changes pages in the score is pushed, new musical
material has to be chosen and shaped into the ongoing musical current. If the
pedal that activates a new event in the computer is pushed, the computer will
respond with either a soundfile or live-processing of the guitar part, or both.
The pedal triggers function as markers of moments of kairos. In our analysis,
the triggers do not necessarily have to mark the posing of a question, they can
just as well mark the making of a decision. Interestingly, the openness of the
score and the possibility for the performer to make choices throughout the
performance allows him or her not only to encounter unexpected moments of
kairos but also to provoke these moments.

l o o Ki ng a head

The ability to move between different time-scales is one of the consistent

demands in musical performance. Therefore, moments of kairos also involve
choices that look further ahead and back in the development of the ongoing

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 Repetition, Resonance, and Discernment

performance. This is inherent to being a resonant subject in the performative

event. Moments of kairos and consequent decisions can always emerge; there-
fore, in a performance of Repetition, this may also occur before the pedals are
pushed. For instance, clip 2 starts with an action that seems to evoke a situation
of immediate choice (already decided on beforehand) of some of the actions to
follow (video clip 2 and Figure 3):

Östersjö plays the three first notes of A2 and pushes both pedals simultaneously
on the second note. Not only does this activate new electronic sounds but it also
takes him to a new page of the score. However, there is no sign of Östersjö reading
the score after the change of page. Instead he immediately continues by playing the
opening of C1, which is one of the materials displayed in the next page. We believe
that the page turn and the alignment of A2 and C1 that occurs was figured out before
the pedals were pushed. However, the continuation after stating the two fragments
seems not to have been pre-planned and Östersjö reads the score intensively before
setting out to play again. The sound file played back is an extensive file of C-material
and Östersjö plays from the middle of A4 to create a contrasting guitar material
with the electronics. When the soundfile ends, and counter to how the composer
originally conceived of how the electronics and acoustic part should interact, he
then states the entire C1 sequence, creating a longer phrase stretching over the 48
seconds of the clip.

Fig. 3

d i s tur ba nc es
Decision making in the moment is not always straightforward. Rather than
emerging from a sense of flow, when all parameters of an activity contribute
to a heightened awareness (Csíkszentmihályi 1990) the moment of kairos can
indeed be a moment of crisis and doubt. Certainty is not part of the vocabulary
of a performer, and even less in this piece. The artist has to be alert, to react, to
contest, to interfere, and, of course, while doubt is allowed, hesitations are not;
they need to remain tacit as the performance must go on. Artistic kairos thus
requires from the musician a sincere participation and active contribution,
making that little difference needed to capture both the essence of the piece
and the attention of the audience.
Two examples of the progression in Clip 1 exemplify such “disturbances” in
the sequence of musical events. The first example of a kairos moment that dis-
turbs, seems to invite a change of mind allowing the performer to readjust and
resonate with the sound environment (Clip 1 and Figure 4):

353

Figure 3: Graphic score layout of clip 2 with pedal triggers indicated.

 Kathleen Coessens, Henrik Frisk and Stefan Östersjö

When Östersjö has played the first melodic line (starting on the last notes of the
11/16 bar of A4 and ending at an E four bars later) he stops first to look at the score
on the screen (00:17) and then pushes the right pedal once (00:19) to arrive at a new
score page. Meanwhile, the electronics is playing a longer soundfile. Östersjö is
silent for six seconds (we only wish that we could record his stream of consciousness
in this moment), preparing for an event performed upon the fretboard. However, he
leaves this hand position and then quickly pushes the pedal four times. This action
with the pedal in fact takes him back to the same page as was the starting point.
What kind of resonance with the space of musical performance is it that leads to this
change of mind? Is it the development of the electronic music? Or is it something
that refers to the shaping of the guitar part? With only the traces of this moment
of musical thinking to refer to we can but guess. It seems obvious though that
the material he turns to, a multi-stopped E that opens B3, does allow for a logical
connection from the broken melodic line in the previous guitar material.

Fig. 4
In Clip 1 we also find a second interesting example of what we could call failed
expectations. Here, the performer’s intention is disturbed by the environmen-
tal response—the interaction of the electronics. The performer has to sense
again and again in the space of resonance what is appropriate and how it can be
expressed in this particular situation of the performance, readjusting an unbal-
anced situation (Clip 1 from 1:04 onwards; see also Figure 4):

At 1:04, after the introduction of a new material in the live electronics, Östersjö
plays a short two-note figure and simultaneously clicks the pedal to activate the
electronics. Surely, the intention was to create a new instance of electronic sound
in response to the previous, cut-off phrase in the electronics. The response from
the computer was however unusually soft and discrete. Also, it was a very short bit
of live-processing so it is followed by silence. This silence then becomes a dramatic
context for Östersjö’s new turn, activating again the electronics a second time at 1:10,

354

Figure 4: Graphic score layout of clip 1 with pedal triggers indicated. The material that has been
crossed over has been taken out in the mix.
 Repetition, Resonance, and Discernment

now with a louder material also in the guitar part (the Koto pizz that opens B1). This
time he has more luck with the electronics, which now responds with an immediate
loud attack. The failed expectations lead to a renewed attempt that weaves the two
preceding phrases together into a longer more coherent section that eventually also
incorporates the entire B2–B3 sections from which the crescendo on the multiple Es
(discussed above) were taken.

s ha pi ng o pen F o r M

While the identity of a work-in-movement is radically unstable, there are com-

positional elements that contribute to create a consistent identity in every per-
formance of Repetition. A strong factor is the electronic sound files that mirror
these aspects of acoustic music in the guitar part. Some of these pre-prepared
materials last for one or more minutes, others are much shorter. The score is
the great paradox of the piece, highly defined in terms of timbre, rhythm, and
pitch as it is. However, as we have already seen from the brief account of the
development of the composition, this minute expression of the composer’s
intentions has never been subject to total obedience. On the contrary: it has
been cut to pieces, reorganised and partly disregarded (but also, meticulously
studied and represented in great detail at other times), all in agreement with
the composer.
But, in a specific performance, how is the form of the piece shaped? How
much of the large-scale form is created in the moment by the performer and to
what extent is the outcome determined by the composed materials? Obviously,
no measurements of these proportions would be either possible or meaning-
ful. However, it is crucial to consider the performer’s continuous negotiations
with both the materials of the composition and the flow of events in the per-
formance to understand musical intuition. Following Mark DeBellis (2009), we
argue that intuitive understandings emerge from an interaction between the
field of possibilities available to the performer and analytical thinking. This is
also the case concerning the large-scale form. But how then are these processes
observed and analysed? We will in the following section turn to examples from
a performance version of Repetition.
In the premiere version of the piece in 2006, Östersjö’s decisions of how to
align the fragments—literally cutting the score to pieces and putting it back
together again in a new order—were related to the physicality of playing the
material on the ten-string guitar, finding new idiomatic links and sonic con-
nections between the three materials. Through these decisions, the choreogra-
phy of hand movements and the physicality of the instrument became further
integrated in the shaping of the form (Östersjö 2008, 301–6). While the com-
poser’s original version followed a rather abstract trajectory—moving from a
predominance of first A, then A and B towards only C-materials—this cut-up
version created a more complex interrelation between the materials in the
acoustic part. Östersjö’s decisions were indeed not based only on local consid-
erations related to the idiomatic qualities in the materials but also on a critical
reading of the design of the large-scale form of the piece.

355
 Kathleen Coessens, Henrik Frisk and Stefan Östersjö

The processes that allow for such integration of form-related considerations

depend on both being in the moment of the now and being informed by past
and present. In a single intuition, we can contract multiple moments of time
(Bergson [1912] 1991, 166). However, the contraction of time can be considered
as an expansion of the present because the moment of now is increased and
intensified by other images and moments of duration, continuously realising
syntheses of past, present, and future (McNamara 1999, 37; Bergson [1912] 1991,
227–28). These dynamic movements of contraction and expansion are depend-
ent upon the needs of action in an actual present. Such constantly changing
and dynamic processes allow the performer to continuously make “mental
leaps back and forth between the present and the past” in a complex inter-
action between calculated choices and intuitive responses (Frisk and Karlsson
2011, 288).
However, beneath the physicality of the instrument and the structural layers
in the score, a third element, the additional voices of the electronics, makes
the overall realisation even more complex, adding another layer in this play
between musical forces. The interplay between the three types of material in
the electronics and how the instrumental part is shaped is indeed a key ele-
ment in understanding how the greater form of the piece is created. Whether
the performer chooses to follow the same trajectory as the electronic part or
whether the instrumental part counters this, both affect the further response
from the electronics. In Clip 2 we see an example of this dialectic:

Stefan plays A2 and presses both pedals to move to C1, a point at which the
electronics start playing a longer C-material. On top of it, he plays mainly A and C
fragments and when the soundfile ends he moves to the first more extended scored
sequence, reading the full C1 out of which a fragment was played at two seconds
into this clip. At 34 seconds, the electronics again play C-material, adding to the
large-scale shape of the phrase. The outcome of this is a segment of 48 seconds of
music which has an underlying structural basis of C-material, counterpointed with
fragmented A- and C-material in the guitar part.

This reflects the design of the composition. The likelihood for C- and
A-materials to be played back, when the performer is reading from the page in
the score where A4 and C1 are found, is quite high. B-materials in the electron-
ics are fairly unlikely to be heard. So this clip represents a typical and intended
behaviour of the electronics and may be said to represent one important
aspect of the way in which the electronics contribute to building larger form
in the piece. But Östersjö’s choice not to play C-material at the start of the first
C-soundfile also contributes to the creation of this longer phrase. Starting at
C1 when the file ends is instrumental for creating the longer phrase.
A somewhat different example can be seen in Clip 1 where the performer
has both the intuition and the intention to enter the space of resonance domi-
nated momentarily by the electronics (Clip 1 from 1:56 onward):

356
 Repetition, Resonance, and Discernment

Östersjö starts playing A2 and presses the pedal to activate the electronics but the
computer responds with live processing in C. At 1:58 Östersjö then pushes the pedal
and starts playing C1. When Stefan presses the pedal again the computer plays B
material and at 2:09 Stefan switches to B2. But from this point he chooses to follow
the trajectory of the scored material, playing the entire B2 and B3 part. Again in
keeping with the intended flexibility of the computer part, the electronics consist
predominantly of B-material, interspersed with elements from first mainly A- and
then mainly C-material.

In the take being mixed as a new release for the present publication, we can
explore the shaping of an entire version of the piece in which the guitar part
has not been edited but represents exactly the choices made by the performer
at every specific moment. This recording offers an insight into the decisions
made in moments of kairos as in the overall shaping of the larger form, inte-
grating different time dimensions. Two examples clarify this:

(1) The first two minutes are built from small fragments taken mainly from A4 and
C1. The function of this section seems to be that of identifying material, or rather,
it could be understood as a process of listening to the material, searching for new
possible identities within the composition. A characteristic which is brought out
in this take is the melodic lines in A4. By breaking up and repeating bars 2–4, these
melodic fragments receive a thematic function that they would not have in an
uninterrupted reading of the score. Incidentally, the computer part “picks up” this
strategy by sampling and playing back one of these melodic contours at 1:26, when
Östersjö starts playing C1. By concealing part of the surrounding structure, the
fragments may open up in different directions. One of those directions is towards
the motoric flow of C4: the first scored section to be played in its entirety at almost
2:30 into the take. But the focus on melody takes over and the opening section
eventually leads to an extended reading of the melody and chords in the B-material
in the score.

(2) If we return to the section about failed expectations, the moment when Östersjö
chooses to start B1 with new electronics becomes decisive for the shape of the entire
piece by launching a section stretching from 2:50 to 5:20 with an uninterrupted
reading of sections B1 to B3. But further, when at 5:20 Östersjö instead introduces
A2, it becomes clear that the extended section of B-materials here leads over to a
section focussed on A, going first backwards from A2 to A1. This sequence is in turn
read in two parts, first starting in the middle and reading to the end. After a short
quote of B-material the beginning of A1 follows. We find a remarkable moment of
melodic construction at the point in bar six of A1 where Östersjö stops before the
two last notes and immediately moves two pages ahead to the middle of the second
bar of A4 in order to return to the melodic material from the opening. Indeed, the
moment when the transition away from A1 needs to be found must be yet another of
the remarkable moments of kairos in the performance. This return to the material
of the opening is followed by a coda made up of B4 and B5 bringing a version of the
piece to a close that has dug out further melodic material from the score and at the
same time also ignores most of the C materials, thus shaping a version of the piece
that emerges from the space of resonance which shapes musical intuition.

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 Kathleen Coessens, Henrik Frisk and Stefan Östersjö

c o nc lus i o n : reso n an c e n eg o tiated by in tu itio n

In our observations of Östersjö’s performances in the recording session we

find a striking multidimensionality of musical discernment. In the moment
of kairos, not only local decisions are taken but also directions for the greater
form in the version of the piece are decided upon. We believe that the grounds
on which these decisions are taken may be described as a space of resonance.
Returning again to the initial quotation from Deleuze, we ask what the condi-
tions may be for this experience of resonance and continuity. We have indeed
seen above how some of these decisions have been taken in moments when
the flow of the music is disturbed or interrupted, demanding a novel initiative
to move on. Failed expectations, doubt or change of mind, does not have to
hinder the musical flow; it may in fact fuel it and result in genuinely original
output.
In the space of resonance in a particular situation, the artist has to find an
equilibrium between instantaneity and duration, between suspension of
individual decisions and the exploration of an artistic trajectory. Resonance
always implies more than the re-sounding of a particular situation, since it
exceeds the space of here and now. The performer continuously integrates
distance and proximity in the performance. The musician negotiates in that
particular performance situation not only the best decisions concerning the
performance itself, but also those concerning the composition of the piece
and even concerning his or her own position towards art, audience, and the
world—emerging in the form of intuition. Is intuition then to be understood
as a background layer, an implicit active ongoing process that only becomes
apparent and explicit in urgent, decisive moments of kairos, in which questions
and answers can emerge both by resistance and resonance? We argue that this
is an apt description of how a composition like Repetition has been given shape
over the years. Furthermore, this reminds us of the Swedish philosopher Hans
Larsson’s ([1892] 1997, 21) Kantian notion of intuition as comprehensio aesthet-
ica, or the multitemporal awareness and immediate availability of necessary
experience and knowledge. Intuition has been a slowly working process in the
development of a concept for a work-in-movement, but one that also continues
to inform the way in which each rendering of the piece has been conceived.
Through this study of some moments of kairos in Östersjö’s performances in
the recording session we might arrive at a (now more detailed) confirmation of
DeBellis’s claim that intuition is the result of an interaction between analyti-
cal thinking and perception, though perception may now be understood as a
highly active process, as being in a space of resonance.

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Coessens, Kathleen. 2009. “Musical in the Arts, edited by Michael Biggs

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as Opera aperta (Milan: Bompiani). Östersjö, Stefan. 2008. Shut Up ’N’
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359
 Intuition, Hexis, and
Resistance in Musical
Experimentation
Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö
Orpheus Research Centre in Music

i ntr o duc ti o n : o n di F F er en t d iFFeren c es

Is there a difference between artistic experimentation and the making of exper-

iments in the sciences? Despite the many ways in which these kinds of action
can be said to be distinguishable from each other, the question immediately
turns upon itself, toward the nature of the concept of difference. The musicol-
ogist Kofi Agawu reminds us how difference has remained a central concept
behind the Western gaze on the “other” (Agawu 2003, Östersjö and Nguyễn
2013). But Agawu’s critique is implicitly directed towards the binary concep-
tion of difference, such as expressed in the history of ethnomusicology as a
definition of the “other.” For instance, Agawu (1995) discusses the construction
of “African rhythm” and the still ongoing tendency to equate “African music”
with “African rhythm,” thus annihilating the complexity of the multitudes of
musical communities that the African continent holds.
Difference in Western thought refers mainly to a relation between binaries.
In the case of African rhythm, the African is defined as distinct from Westerners
by a supreme sense of rhythm, the complexity of which is incomprehensible
for a Westerner. Agawu argues that these positions are held by both Western
and African scholars and he concludes that, rather than being merely a result
of colonialism it is today formed within “a field of discourse, an intellectual
space defined by Euro-American traditions of ordering knowledge” (Agawu
1995, 383). However, Deleuze, following Bergson, points to a different notion
of difference, not as the relation between binaries but as an ontological aspect
of reality: difference as the origin of what is, as a force behind the multiplicity
of things (Grosz 2005, 6).
Similarly, our argument does not aim to identify a specific series of differ-
ences between experimentation in science and in the arts; rather, it is intended
as an exploration of the spaces in between the two. In fact, we are not making
a comparison at all: the claims we make are specific to artistic experimentation
but do not attempt to create a distinction between experimentation in other
contexts and disciplines. We look at difference in artistic experimentation as

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 Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

a notion of multiplicity that extends between the known and the unknown in
artistic experimentation. From such a point of view, experimental practices in
the arts do not primarily deal with actions the outcome of which is unknown—
referring to Cage’s definition—but rather with the creation of systems of
interrelated forces and agents in which the outcome can be intuitively known,
through the tacit knowing situated in the musician’s body. Experimental prac-
tices open the potential of the interval between the explicit and the tacit, the
expected and the unexpected.
The current president of the European Research Council (ERC), Helga
Nowotny (2011, xviii), points at uncertainty and the “desire for the unexpected”
as a vital property of research and finds that the need to oppose regulations,
control, and attempts to tame curiosity, so essential to experimentation, is
shared also by scientific research: “Between society’s preference for the new
and its attempts to gain or regain control over what is uncontrollable, since
it is not known where curiosity and the ‘play of possibilities’ will lead or what
consequences will result from it, a vast zone of uncertainty is emerging as the
true breeding ground of creativity, be it scientific or artistic” (ibid.). While we
argue that artistic experimentation is not a search for the unknown nor an
expectation of the unknown, it does explore the fine line between the known
and the unknown or, even better, between the expected and the unexpected.
We find experimentation to be a core element in artistic research, along the
lines expressed by Mika Hannula (2011, 70) speaking of the current status of
this field: “We have to keep its possibilities open and move towards a vision of
artistic research which is self-critical and self-reflexive. Put differently, we must
have the courage to be anarchistic and experimental.” However, if we want to
join a self-critical and self-reflexive position with experimental action, we need
to be aware of the specificity of artistic experimentation in music. Therefore,
we need to discern its characteristics, not to define it, but to seize it, to grasp it
with all our senses and understanding.
A first discernment concerns situatedness: artistic experimentation opens up
a space where the intuitively known takes shape through artistic production. It
is a liminal space where thought and act and expectation and the unexpected
meet. In the realm of perception and action, the artistic imaginary potential
has to be realised, to be opened, explored, and adjusted: we have to experiment
with our imaginations, not only as “thought experiments,” but in real time and
space. Accordingly, in this liminal space where intuition and musical imagi-
nation shape the creative act, we are confronted with one realisation out of
the field of possibilities. For example, a musician may have to deal with failed
expectations and find, in the moment, a musically relevant way to cope with
the unexpected. Artistic experimentation brings to the fore and materialises a
self-reflective awareness of the potential of this liminal space.
A second discernment concerns the dialogical nature of artistic action.
Following Nancy (2007), we note that self-reflection is not merely about intro-
spection but, just like listening, is about sharing: “A blow from outside, clamor
from within, this sonorous, sonorized body undertakes a simultaneous listen-
ing to a ‘self ’ and to a ‘world’ that are both in resonance” (42–43). The liminal

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 Intuition, Hexis, and Resistance in Musical Experimentation

space reveals itself as a space of resonance emerging from “an intensification

and a concern, a curiosity or an anxiety” (5), steering the artist to inquire into
that which “is not immediately accessible” (6), that which is “on the edge of
meaning” (7), opening up to “the resonance of being, or to being as resonance”
(21). Therefore, instead of a subject that declares itself an experimenter or cre-
ator, a space of resonance emerges in musical experimentation. Again here, dif-
ference is not between the self and the other but fills the interval between the
self and the self as other, between the other and the other as self. Or as Nancy
writes, it is “a reality consequently indissociably ‘mine’ and ‘other,’ ‘singular’
and ‘plural,’ as much as it is ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’ and ‘signifying’ and ‘a-sig-
nifying’” (12).
This brings us to a third discernment, which concerns the multiple layers
present in that resonating space. Different layers of time, perception, space,
materials, and identity coexist.
First, time-lines conflate in that resonant space: the now in the continuity
and the kairos of the moment in the larger time frame. Intuitive acts or deci-
sions partake of the now as well as the not-now as our experience of time is
extended both by past and by future. Husserl calls these extensions retension
and protension (1991, 11–12). On one hand, retension is the presence of the past
in the now, the hindsight bearing not the past itself but the remembrance of
the experience of the past, and as such the presence of the known. Each present
is pregnant with our experiences of the past: the past preexists as well as coex-
ists with the now. On the other hand, protension is the leap towards the future,
the foresight included in our acts and thoughts—and, as such, is the presence
of the unknown.
Second, different levels and qualities of perception coexist. The haptic, the
auditive, the visual, and the motoric are in constant movement and exchange of
information and response. Inside and outside resonate.
Third, linked to this high perceptual awareness and responsivity, movements
and bodily awareness are in an acute process of listening and intervening,
interfering with space and materials.
Finally, in this liminal space, identity is continuously negotiated between pri-
vate and public, artistic and cultural, the self and the other. Resonance implies
recognition of the presence of the other, and a shift from dualistic conceptions
of difference, turning from antagonism towards an understanding of differ-
ence as the origin of the multiple and diverse.
These three discernments concerning experimental practices in music—the
moment, the dialogue, and the multiple layers—are at the heart of our three
other texts in the present publication. Drawing on observations of the embod-
ied nature of artistic knowing, each elaborates specific concepts particular to
artistic experimentation.
In the present text, we briefly overview the findings and observations in the
three empirically based texts and denote their impact on our artistic practices.
We first explore the relation between inside and outside, considering the dif-
ferent timelines in which we find musical intuition operating. Whether in the
long-term development of a compositional project, a day-long working session

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 Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

in a recording studio, or the kairos moment of choice in the midst of perfor-

mance or in the writing of a composition, intuition appears to be omnipresent
as a background process.
Second, in the social realm of the musician’s body, we find the paired con-
cepts of habitus and hexis to be central to the understanding of musical experi-
mentation. It is through the expression of a hexis that a musician can develop a
distinct relation to an artistic context and address it in a critical and explorative
manner. Confrontations with the resistance of culture, the body, and materials
compel the artist to be alert and dynamic. Interactions between the artist and
the broader cultural, musical, and material environment set the ground for the
liminal space within which decisions are taken.

i ntui ti o n a n d K airo s

Kairos is an ancient Greek term that denotes the single pivotal moment, the
opportune time, when the right decision or action can and should be taken.
Kairos is the operative mode in performance: the artist has to seize that
moment with his or her artistic powers.
The artistic choice in the moment of kairos is usually not made verbally, nor
after rational argumentation: artistic experience, background skill, and knowl-
edge are needed to cope with these moments. Evidently, the artistic decisions
are not “anything goes.” Artistic action in the moment of kairos expands clearly
beyond the single moment of decision and action toward past experience, as
well as toward intuitive and analytical foresight. Hence, kairos presents itself as
the pivotal moment between belief and agency, past and future.
How does the artist move from belief to agency, from opportunity to choice?
Can we think of Bergson’s proposition of intuition as a method—here a method
for artistic practice—and not only a method for philosophy? “There is noth-
ing impulsive or vague about intuition, which is a rigorous . . . method for an
attunement with the concrete specificities of the real. Intuition is the method
by which unique and original concepts are created and developed for objects,
qualities and durations that are themselves unique and specific” (Grosz 2005,
7–8). For Deleuze and Bergson, intuition is not an immediate given, it has to be
practised and performed: it requires training and experience. Therefore, intu-
ition is embedded in artistic practice, in everyday labour as well as in moments
of discovery. But there is even more: intuition proposes a plurality of possibili-
ties, of directions. It not only expands past experience into a subtle and sudden
choice in the now but also extends this now experience again, into the future.
Thus, while it sustains the decisions in kairos, in the moment of action, it is
itself embedded in duration—duration of experiences, of memory, and of the
transformations that all these decisions inscribe into the body and the intuitive
processes. All the actions taken are part of a line of transformations affecting
oneself and the environment; they are often instigated by intuition and again
feed intuition.

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 Intuition, Hexis, and Resistance in Musical Experimentation

In our analysis of Östersjö’s performance of Henrik Frisk’s Repetition Repeats

All Other Repetitions (20061) we identified a specific interplay between intuitive
knowing and the moment of kairos. In the collaborative shaping of this open-
form composition by composer and performer, the flow of artistic intuition is
revealed in multiple time-lines over a period of several years and in moments
of kairos in the creation of form in real time in performance. It is important to
note that these decisions in the moment can be seen to result in structurally
coherent shaping of the music on multiple levels. Again, rather than “anything
goes,” the shaping of the large-scale form in the recording reflects a clear rela-
tion between analytical thinking and intuition.
We also discussed this close interplay between analytical thinking and per-
ception in musical intuition in the chapter drawing on Östersjö’s collabora-
tion with American composer Richard Karpen. This interplay explores the
interval between the known and the unknown—an interplay we found clearly
expressed in their development of a section in the composition Strandlines. The
piece starts with all but one of the guitar strings tuned to a G♯. The composer
and the performer set out to create a harmonic progression from this point of
departure. Longer periods of reflection and instances of kairos merged in the
making of “right” decisions, turning what seemed to be a mere miscalculation
of the correct notes in the overtone-series into an artistic finding backed by
“informed” intuition. So was it only by chance that they found themselves end-
ing with a final harmonic centre derived from the overtone series of G♯? We
argue strongly that this is not the case. It is clear from the conversation between
Östersjö and Karpen that this relation was not verbally expressed; however, we
believe that the underlying processes, the musical intuition, drew on both ana-
lytic thinking and material experimentation.

h ex i s a nd r es i s ta nc e

Intuition refers both to things outside controlled skill and to things inside the
whole experience of the artist as an artist and a human being. Thus, it crosses
back and forth between the fields of the known and the unknown. It partakes
in two movements: the first is toward the inside and is “available to us at those
moments of reflection when we can perceive our own inner continuity above
and beyond action and definable results” (Grosz 2005, 8). The second is when
this inside encounters the outside—the material, the outer world of objects.
However, intuition is not “reflection” as we know it, nor is it an action upon
the outer world. It is rather that positioning between inside and outside that
realises the continuity between both and that allows for interaction and new
potentialities. For the artist, this means the authentic encounter with the
instrument, the score, and the other musician, but also with other cultures.
Intuition can offer a possible discernment between cultural habitus and the
striving for artistic virtue, or hexis.

1 Even if the score was finished in 2006, the composition was conceived as a radically open work, and
accordingly one may say that the compositional process is still ongoing.

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 Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

In the chapter in this volume on habitus and the resistance of culture, we

argued that the hexis of a musician—the striving for artistic virtue—consti-
tutes the springboard toward musical experimentation. It offers an enormous
potential, which we described through the notion of resistance. Resistance
in our discussion has a double reference. On the one hand it refers to the
resistance of materials and how a conflict may emerge between the habitus of
a performer and the materiality of the musical context. For instance, in tra-
ditional Vietnamese theatre, an actor is trained by a master to perform a lim-
ited number of roles, which are in turn connected to specific traditional cos-
tumes. For the Tuong actor asked to perform traditional acting and singing in
Western clothing, an extended negotiation between different theatre cultures
was needed. The confrontation between the known and the unknown shifted
and even disturbed subtle landmarks of artistic expertise. On the other hand,
resistance may form as a considered aesthetic approach to such a conflict,
opening new possibilities. With reference to Helmut Lachenmann, “resistance
of habit” becomes a “compositional” approach that may characterise the artis-
tic virtue expressed in the hexis of the musician (Lachenmann 2004, Östersjö
2013). Such an expression of hexis can be found in the negotiation between
different musical traditions that occurred when Richard Karpen and Nguyễn
Thanh Thủy resolved a long-standing conflict concerning the opening scene
in the music theatre piece IDIOMS (2010–11). While the large-scale trajectory
of the scene and its development in the vocal part—from reading to recitation
to traditional singing—was quite clear, it turned out that the composer’s con-
ception of the instrumental music clashed with how a traditional accompani-
ment would sound. It was in the intuitive finding of a novel chordal playing
technique on the dan tranh and in the moment of kairos in which they jointly
developed this material that a solution to this conflict, which was also between
different kinds of cultural capital, could be identified. The decisive turning
point in this liminal space constituted a denial of habit that we characterise as
an expression of hexis.
In the liminal space in which musical experimentation may take place, the
hexis of a musician constitutes the bridge between intuitive knowing and the
desire for the unknown.

c o nc lus i o n
There is an obvious danger in discussing artistic experimentation from binary
perspectives such as “experimentation” versus “non-experimentation”2 or
“artistic” versus “scientific” experimentation. Our intention with this chap-
ter has been to open up the notion of difference toward the multifarious field
between the known and the unknown. In our understanding, artistic exper-
imentation in music is a state in which a musician can enter through choice,
hard labour, or even by pure luck. Finally, we argue that artistic research built

2 In ordinary parlance, the latter would be referred to as “conventional” or “commercial.”

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 Intuition, Hexis, and Resistance in Musical Experimentation

on an understanding of experimentation that stretches beyond the binary con-

ceptions of difference that we have discussed may contribute to a broader and
deeper understanding of musical practice in all its complexity and richness.

References
Agawu, Kofi. 1995. “The Invention of ‘African Lachenmann, Helmut. 2004. “Philosophy
Rhythm.’” In “Music Anthropologies and of Composition: Is There Such a Thing?”
Music Histories,” special issue, Journal of In Identity and Difference: Essays on Music,
the American Musicological Society 48 (3): Language and Time, by Jonathan Cross,
380–95. Jonathan Harvey, Helmut Lachenmann,
———. 2003. “Contesting Difference: A Albrecht Wellmer, and Richard Klein,
Critique of Africanist Ethnomusicology.” 55–70. Collected Writings of the Orpheus
In The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Institute. Leuven: Leuven University
Introduction, edited by Martin Clayton, Press.
Trevor Herbert, and Richard Middleton, Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2007. Listening. Translated
227–37. London: Routledge. by Charlotte Mandell. New York:
Grosz, Elizabeth. 2005. “Bergson, Deleuze Fordham University Press. First
and the Becoming of Unbecoming.” published 2002 as A l’écoute (Paris:
Parallax 11 (2): 4–13. Éditions Galilée).
Hannula, Mika. 2011. “River Low, Mountain Nowotny, Helga. 2011. Foreword to The
High: Contextualizing Artistic Research.” Routledge Companion to Research in the
In Artistic Research, edited by Annette W. Arts, edited by Michael Biggs and Henrik
Balkema and Henk Slager, 70–79. Lier en Karlsson, xvii–xxvi. Abingdon, UK:
Boog 18. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Routledge.
Husserl, Edmund. 1991. On the Phenomenology Östersjö, Stefan. 2013. “The Resistance of
of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893– the Turkish Makam and the Habitus of a
1917). Translated by John Barnett Brough. Performer: Reflections on a Collaborative
Collected Works 4. Dordrecht: Kluwer. CD-Project with Erdem Helvacioğlu.”
Translation of Zur Phänomenologie des Contemporary Music Review 32 (2–3):
inneren Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917), edited 201–13.
by Rudolf Boehm, Husserliana 10 (The Östersjö, Stefan, and Nguyễn Thanh Thủy.
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), which 2013. “Traditions in Transformation: The
revised and expanded Vorlesungen zur Function of Openness in the Interaction
Phänomenologie des innern Zeitbewusstseins, between Musicians.” In (Re)Thinking
edited by Martin Heidegger, Jahrbuch Improvisation: Artistic Explorations and
für Philosophie und phänomenologische Conceptual Writing, edited by Henrik Frisk
Forschung 9 (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1928). and Stefan Östersjö, 184–201. Lund: Lund
University Press.

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 Appendix 1:
Glossary

Anna Scott
Orpheus Research Centre in Music

Note: Unless otherwise stated, article references refer to texts found within this volume.
Definitions are given in order of appearance in the book of the article from which they derive.

Anthrophonic: Any sound of human origin within a given environment.

Arpa doppia: Literally translated as “double harp,” arpa doppia refers to the
double- and even triple-strung harps commonly used in Italian music during
the seicento. This harp’s name refers not only to its multiple rows of strings, but
also to its expanded size and register as compared to its predecessors.

Arpeggiation: An expressive device common in nineteenth-century pianism,

whereby the notes of vertically-notated chords were played one after another
rather than simultaneously. Arpeggiation was used to either propel or empha-
size musical material depending on the speed with which the chords were
spread, and was accomplished by rolling chords from bottom to top or in any
other order according to factors such as voice leading.

Artistic Experimentation:
• Artistic experimentation encompasses the actions that an artist under-
takes in developing and constantly renewing personal artistic identity
and expertise. (ORCiM Brochure on Artistic Experimentation [2010],
in Tromans, “Experiments in Time,” and Harris, “Techno-Intuition.”)
• While experimentation in general refers to the systematic interroga-
tion of some aspect of reality for the purpose of understanding and
explaining it, experimentation in music-making involves the listener
in this process of discovery by trying to communicate the desire and
exhilaration of addressing one’s questions in ways that listeners can
experience for themselves. In experimentation in music-making
therefore, listeners become fellow experimenters rather than exper-
imental subjects. (Barrett, “From Experimentation to Construction.”)
• Experimentation in musical composition is a dynamic and transform-
ative process between mind and matter referring to a composer’s
quest for activities through which he or she transforms ideas or feel-
ings into expressive figures that may become (part of) a composition.

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 Anna Scott

Experimentation in this context thus implies a coming together of

cognitive and emotional processes on one hand, and a series of actions
on the other. Compared to generally creative acts that can often be
loose and accidental, experiments in composition can form a mean-
ingful whole but do not always lead linearly to an artistic product, and
as such they hover somewhere between generally creative acts and the
creative process of composing. (Roels, “Cycles of Experimentation.”)

a r ti s ti c r esearc h ( researc h in - an d - th ro u g h artistic

pr ac ti c e ):

• Research activities where the artist herself is the primary investigator,

and in which the object researched is her own art or artistic processes
and practices. (Coessens, Crispin, and Douglas [2009], in Gloor,
“Association-Based Experimentation.”)
• Artistic or aesthetic operations that, rather than delivering findings,
allow for the anticipation of future knowledge. (Borgdorff [2012], in
Schwab, “Rheinberger Questionnaire.”)
• Research conducted by musicians in the medium of music-mak-
ing itself, rather than from the position of an observer. In order to
ensure that musical practice-as-research is recognizable as such by
other fields, it requires discursive framing in order to achieve wider
dissemination. (See exposition.) (Tromans, “Experiments in Time” and
“Cageian Interpenetration.”)
• Research where the artist is both subject and researcher, thus dissolv-
ing any theoretical distance between researcher and art object, prac-
tice or event. As the artist’s practice forms an essential component of
the research process and results, in artistic research that practice can-
not remain untouched, unaffected, uninvolved. (Borgdorff [2012], in
Cobussen, “Towards an Ethical-Political Role.”)
• An artist’s conscious and deliberate exploration of their own artis-
tic practice, including their theoretical and historical knowledge of
music, their knowledge of various repertoires, the traces of past artis-
tic experiences, and the acquired procedural knowledge necessary to
playing instruments, reading scores or composing. The ultimate aim
of artistic research is the generation of new knowledge. (Vanhecke, “A
New Path.”)
• Contributions of both data and insight from practicing musicians,
where the research outcomes include discourse both about and in
the problem; where the research is validated by new performances or
works that it has brought into being; where the research is carried out
in special environments with received or newly-devised tools and a
community of fellow practitioners qualified to critique its outcomes;
where the research is situated conceptually in a framework inclusive of
other disciplines; and where the research leaves a trace of some kind
beyond its purely artistic outcomes. (Brooks, “Historical Precedents.”)

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 Appendix 1: Glossary

(a lt e r n at i v e ly , s ee reSe arc h o n th e art S .)

Avant-garde music:
• Music that derives from the great traditions of Western art music,
as opposed to experimental music, which is inspired by other sources
including non-literate ones. (Nyman [1999], in Gilmore, “Five Maps.”)
• Music that occupies an extreme position within a tradition. (Nicholls
[1998], in Vanhecke, “A New Path.”)

Bağlama: The most commonly used stringed instrument in traditional Turkish

folk music, the bağlama is a seven-stringed and fretted instrument character-
ised by a deep rounded back and a long slender neck.

Biophonic: Any sound produced by vocalizing non-human animals within a

given environment.

Cartesian (dualism): Originating in the work of René Descartes, Cartesian

dualism posits the mind and body as being composed of wholly different sub-
stances: the mental (not spatially-extended) and the material (incapable of
thought).

Charango: A member of the lute family, the charango is a small Andean stringed
instrument that often (though not always) features ten strings arranged in five
courses of two strings.

Conceptual Art: Artwork characterised by an idea or concept that deter-

mines all of the aspects of that artwork, and thus where the concept becomes
a “machine that makes the art.” (LeWitt [1967], in Craenen, “Speaking and
Singing.”)

Convolution: Spectral convolution is a signal processing technique whereby

components of two different files are combined and re-synthesized into a new
sound file. Here, the impulse response characteristics of file “A” are combined
with the resonance characteristics of sound “B,” creating a hybrid (“C”) where
the nuances of “A” articulate the timbre of “B.” (Juan Parra Cancino, personal
communication)

Đàn bâ`u: A plucked single-stringed Vietnamese instrument characterised by

its long and slender sound box and a distinctive decorative gourd.

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 Anna Scott

Đàn tranh: A plucked Vietnamese zither featuring moveable bridges, a long

sound box, and tuning pegs that sit atop the instrument’s soundboard. While
the đàn tranh typically has sixteen or seventeen steel strings, some variations
can have as many as twenty-five.

Đàn tỳ bà: A distinctively pear-shaped Vietnamese four-stringed plucked

instrument that is held nearly vertically and often played with the frequent
bending of tones.

Dislocation: A nineteenth-century pianistic device involving the playing of one

hand after the other in material notated vertically in the score. This technique
was typically used to either expressively propel or emphasize musical material,
depending on the amount of time allowed to elapse between the dislocated
notes.

Dodecaphony: A twelve-tone serialist technique of atonal composition devel-

oped by Arnold Schoenberg in the 1920s that uses all twelve chromatic tones
in tone rows.

Embodiment (in artistic research): Far from examining the role of the instru-
mentalist’s body as merely a vehicle for the realisation of cognised musical
intentions, practice-based embodiment studies in music take into considera-
tion recent findings in the fields of phenomenology, neuroscience and body
theory, where embodiment is seen as a complex intertwining of lived bodily
experience and mental representation, and where musical meaning is thus
experienced rather than cognitised. This experiential quality of embodiment
and its intertwining of movement and intention is best elucidated in artistic
research settings from the subjective perspective of the practicing musician,
often through problematizing the notion of the performer’s body as a vehicle
for the realisation of cognitised musical intentions. (Laws, “Embodiment and
Gesture.”)

EMDR Therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy):

A form of psychotherapy that posits disturbing memories of severe traumas
as the cause of psychopathologies such as post traumatic stress disorder, and
that seeks to reduce their effects by having patients recall disturbing memories
while being subjected to various sensory inputs such as side-to-side eye move-
ments, tones or taps, while also undergoing other parallel treatments such as
cognitive behavioural therapy.

Epistemic Things: The characteristically vague, irreducible research object

that emerges from an experimental system, and that paradoxically embodies that
which one does not yet know. This unpredicted and unknown phenomena then
arrives in a knowledge domain, in an experimental system, or in the scientific
field as a whole, where it is transformed into new knowledge, thereby creat-
ing new technical objects that can be used to further develop pre-existing exper-

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 Appendix 1: Glossary

imental systems. An epistemic thing is thus the guise in which new knowledge
enters an experimental scene. (Rheinberger [1997], in Schwab, “Rheinberger
Questionnaire.”)

Exordium: In Western classical rhetoric, an exordium is the introductory por-

tion of an oration that is designed to establish the purpose and tone of the
coming discourse.

e x per i M enta l M us i c :
• Music including novel elements, or music whose sonic outcome in
performance is unpredictable. (Cage [1959], in Gilmore, “Five Maps.”)
• As in the sciences, experimental music is that in which a composer
tests hypotheses through the medium of music, observes outcomes,
and then follows up on certain compositional elements with new
experiments. Here, composition can thus be understood as ongoing
research. (Tenney, Kasemets, and Pearson [1984], in Gilmore, “Five
Maps.”)
• A type of music from a particular historical era, encompassing though
not limited to the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, that fulfils Cage’s famous defi-
nition of experimental music: that is, music with indeterminate sonic
outcomes in performance. (Wolf, cited in Tenney [1990], in Gilmore,
“Five Maps.”)
• All interesting new music that cannot be classified as avant-garde.
(Nyman [1999], in Gilmore, “Five Maps.”)
• Music that poses and is driven by relevant problems. (Raes,
“Experimental Art.”)
• Music that lies outside of tradition. (Nicholls [1998], in Vanhecke,
“A New Path.”)

Experimental Systems: A key notion in Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s theory of

experimentation used to characterise the space within which researchers con-
duct their experimental work, experimental systems are systems of manipu-
lation designed to give unknown answers to questions that the experiment-
ers themselves are not yet able to ask. These systems employ technical objects
in order to create unprecedented events, that is, material traces that lead to
epistemic things, and with them to future insight and knowledge. In order to be
productive, experimental systems need to be differentially organised and suffi-
ciently open to play out their own capacities, unanticipated by the researcher.
Experimental systems, and not individual experiments, are the most elemen-
tary parts of the experimental sciences; and while they must be as coherent as
possible, contrary to individual experiments they are set up materially, socially,
financially and geographically. (Rheinberger [1997] and [2012], in Schwab,
“Exposition” and “Rheinberger Questionnaire.”)

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 Anna Scott

Exposition: The term exposition indicates all possible forms of transforma-

tion that bring out (or “expose”) knowledge from an experimental system and the
unpredictable events it produces: a process without which such unexpected
events may never be formed into epistemic things that lead to the production
of new knowledge. In other words, exposition refers to the discursive supple-
mentation of practice that can allow for the emergence of different identities
of this practice; the modes by which an artistic object’s epistemic identity
are made manifest. Exposition can include laboratory notes and conference
papers, as well as any other discursive mode of recording, transformation and
presentation. (Schwab [2011] and [2012a], in “Rheinberger Questionnaire” and
“Exposition.”)

Exteroception: The sense by which one perceives stimuli originating from

outside of one’s body.

Geophonic: Any sound of non-biological origin within a given environment,

whether marine or terrestrial.

g es tur e :
• Gesture in music can refer to purely sonic objects with particular
characteristics, purely physical phenomena (how a musician moves),
or entities that have both physical and sonic properties. (Laws,
“Embodiment and Gesture.”)
• A combination of extension (movement of the body in space) and
intention (what we imagine), whereby a gesture is not simply pure
physical movement, but rather one that possesses intentional mean-
ing and expression, thus blurring the distinction between movement
and meaning. (Leman and Godøy [2010], in Laws, “Embodiment and
Gesture.”)
• Any energetic shaping in time that can be interpreted as having signif-
icance. (Hatten [2006], in Laws, “Embodiment and Gesture.”)

Grapheme: The smallest fundamental unit of a written language, including

single letters (or symbols) or sequences of letters that represent sounds (pho-
nemes) in words.
• The smallest semantic unit of written text, extended by Rheinberger
to include material traces that emerge from an experimental system.
(Rheinberger [1997], in Schwab, “Exposition.”)

Habitus: A general, mainly tacitly and socially acquired whole of embodied

patterns that frame how to behave, act in, and interfere with the outer world,
and that can be adapted and re-coordinated in specific situations. (Coessens
and Östersjö, “Habitus and the Resistance of Culture.”)

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 Appendix 1: Glossary

Hermeneutics: The theory or discipline of interpreting texts and other forms

of verbal and nonverbal communication.

Heuristics: Experientially rooted and readily accessible techniques used for

problem solving, communication, learning, and discovery.

Hexis: The origins of the social concept of habitus, hexis as used by Aristotle
refers to both the natural dispositions with which humans are born, as well as
cultural dispositions acquired through repeated experiential processes of act-
ing, learning, and habituation. The Aristotelian notion of hexis extends beyond
behaviour and action patterns in that it includes moral actions as well as prac-
tical skills. (Aristotle [1934] 2003, 16–26 [1130a], in Coessens and Östersjö,
“Habitus and the Resistance of Culture.”)

Ictus: In music and poetry, ictus refers to the instant inhabited by a beat, pulse
or stressed syllable.

Kairos: From an ancient Greek word meaning fitness, opportunity or time, kai-
ros typically refers to the opportune time and/or place for the accomplishment
of a crucial decision or action, especially as related to Western classical rhetoric.
• An artistically opportune choice of action. (Coessens, “Tiny Moments.”)
• The convergence of knowing how and knowing when: the faculty
of both observing and realizing in any given case the available artis-
tic means at hand. (Atwill [1998] in Coessens, Frisk and Östersjö,
“Repetition, Resonance, and Discernment.”)
• An artist”s ability to cope with the unexpected, with the particular
constraints of a situation and of his or her own act in the liminal space
of performance. (Coessens [2009], in Coessens, Frisk and Östersjö,
“Repetition, Resonance, and Discernment.”)

Liederabend: Literally translated, a liederabend is an evening of song.

Mimesis: A widely applicable term often used to describe processes or

instances of imitation, representation, resemblance and mimicry.

Phoenix-Egg Controller: An electronic music controller prototype based on

spatialisation algorithms and designed to bring the notion of spatial manipula-
tion over time to the domain of live performance. The controller maps actions
and gestures such as rotation speed, direction, hand proximity and tilt position-
ing, to a software system of vector-based amplitude panning, granular reverbs
and various other spatialisation algorithms. The Phoenix-Egg Controller was
developed by Juan Parra in collaboration with Lex van den Broek, head of the
Electronic Workshop at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Holland. (Juan
Parra Cancino, personal communication.)

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 Anna Scott

Pizzicato secco: A variation on the pizzicato (or plucked string) technique,

whereby a string is dampened or deadened immediately after it is plucked to
prevent resonation.

Process Music: A musical work that is the product of an impersonal and

autonomous process that determines all of the musical relationships within
that work, on both a small and large scale (as in a canon, for example). In pro-
cess music therefore, the composer”s role is limited to defining the process
and its starting conditions. (Reich [1968], in Craenen, “Speaking and Singing.”)

Proprioception: The sense by which one perceives or is aware of the relative

position of the parts of one’s body and the strength or effort exerted in their
movement.

Recitar cantando: Literally translated as “speaking in song,” recitar cantando

was a popular form of singing in the Italian seicento that was inspired by the
music of ancient Greece. Designed to move listeners more directly, it consisted
of a single melodic line imbued with the inflections of human speech, and was
thus in stark contrast to other more complex and contrapuntal vocal music
forms popular at the time.

Research on the arts: Primarily reflective and interpretative, research on

(rather than in-and-through) the arts is a mode of inquiry whereby the art object
studied remains untouched by the gaze of the researcher, thereby preserving
theoretical distance between researcher and art object or event. (Borgdorff
[2012], in Cobussen, “Towards an Ethical-Political Role.”) (Alternatively, see
artistic research.)

Santoor: A hammered dulcimer commonly used in traditional Indian and

Persian music, the santoor typically features a trapezoidal sound box, two sets
of bridges, and seventy-two horizontal strings that are hit with small mallets.

Scordatura: A musical term referring to an alternate or “mistuning” of

stringed instruments. In the case of a violin for example, any tuning other than
the established tuning of g-d’-a’-e” would be considered scordatura.

Seicento: Literally translated as “six hundred” and shortened from mille sei-
cento (one thousand six hundred), the seicento typically refers to a period of
Italian cultural activity and production from 1601 and 1700.

Sprezzatura: A term popularly used to refer to a free style of Italian seven-

teenth-century musical performance in which a strict observance of tempo was
ignored, resulting in a style akin to a kind of studied nonchalance. As Lawrence-
King argues in this volume however, in this historical context a steady under-
lying tactus would have been assumed by default. (Lawrence-King, “Il Palpitar
del Core.”)

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 Appendix 1: Glossary

Synaesthesis: The simultaneous presence, union or translation between dif-

ferent perceptual senses. (Coessens, “Web of Artistic Practice.”)

Tactus: In early seventeenth-century musical contexts, tactus refers to the

underlying organisation of rhythm (in both theoretical and practical terms)
according to long, slow note values meant to imitate the motion of the stars,
whose circular orbits were understood to generate the music of the spheres.
(Lawrence-King, “Il Palpitar del Core.”)

Technical Objects: As key components in experimental systems, technical objects

are often the result of previous experimentation, are fixed and easily accessible,
and are used to conduct and control experiments as well as to limit the varia-
bles in a given experimental system. Technical objects embody the knowledge
of a given research field at a given time, and are the material traces employed by
experimental systems that lead to unprecedented events, or epistemic things, and
with them to future knowledge. (Rheinberger [1997], in Schwab, “Rheinberger
Questionnaire” and “Exposition.”)

Teleology: A doctrine, theory or study whereby natural processes are under-

stood to be directed toward and/or shaped by some end, purpose, or design.

Umwelt: Literally translated as “environment,” Umwelt is typically used to refer

to one’s surroundings, setting or milieu. Through the work of the German biol-
ogist Jakob von Uexküll however, the term has acquired more specific semiotic
meanings as the ecological niche as perceived by an animal; the experienced
world, phenomenal world, or subjective universe; and the cognitive map or
mind-set. (Hoffmeyer [2012], in De Assis, “Epistemic Complexity.”)

Vocoding: A signal processing technique that combines two sound charac-

teristics (amplitude modulation and timbre) from two different sources into
a third sound. Normally the source providing the timbre characteristic is fairly
static (like a noise bank) while the one acting as modulator (or “formant”) is
variable but has a relatively simple spectral character (like the human voice, for
example). (Juan Parra Cancino, personal communication)

377
 Appendix 2:
Contents of CD

1 Richard Barrett: Construction (excerpt)

2 Steve Tromans: Just Friends; Bemsha Swing
3 Henrik Frisk: Repetition repeats other repetitions
4 Agostino di Scipio: 2 pezzi di ascolto e sorveglianza
5 Juan Parra: Life is too precious
6 Bart Vanhecke: Improvisation fixe sur une image
7 James Tenney: Harmonium # 1
8 Luigi Nono: …sofferte onde serene…
9 Frederik Neyrinck: Aphorisme IX

t r acK 1
title of composition: CONSTRUCTION (excerpt)
year of composition: 2011
composer: Richard Barrett
performers: Elision Ensemble conducted by Eugene Ughetti
date of recording: 19 November 2011
recording producer: recorded by Lawrence Harvey and Michael Hewes
recording space: live recording, Huddersfield Town Hall

Track 2
title of composition: Just Friends (1931),
composed John Klenner and Sam Lewis;
“Bemsha Swing” (1952),
composed Thelonious Monk and Denzil Best.
performers: Steve Tromans (piano),
J. J. Wheeler (drums).
recording date: 14 June 2011. Recorded: Recital Hall, Birmingham
Conservatoire, UK.
Recording taken from the album, Blue Room,
produced and issued by Mongrel Records
(http://www.mongrelrecords.wordpress.com).

379
 Appendix 2: Contents of CD

Track 3
title of composition: Repetition Repeats All Other Repetitions
year of composition: 2006
composer: Henrik Frisk
performer: Stefan Östersjö
date of recording: 26 januari 2011
recording producer: Henrik Frisk
recording space: EMS (Electronic Music Studios, Stockholm)

Track 4
title of composition: 2 pezzi di ascolto e sorveglianza [2 pieces of listening and
surveillance] for “autonomous sound-generating sys-
tem with flute and electronics”
year of composition: 2009-2010
composer: Agostino Di Scipio
performers: Agostino Di Scipio
date of recording: 28.02.2012
recording producer: Juan Parra
recording space: Orpheus Auditorium, Orpheus Institute, Ghent. BE

t r acK 5
title of composition: Life is too precious…
year of composition: 2011
composer: Juan Parra Cancino
performers: Juan Parra Cancino
date of recording: October 2011
recording producer: recorded by Juan Parra Cancino
recording space: ORCiM 5 studio, Orpheus Institute, Ghent, Belgium
previously released on 100dollar guitar compilation.
www.100dollarguitar.com

Track 6
title of composition: Improvisation fixe sur une image
year of composition: 2012
composer: Bart Vanhecke
performer: Bart Vanhecke
date of recording: 10 March 2012
recording producer: recorded by Bart Vanhecke
recording space: Huldenberg, Belgium

380
 Appendix 2: Contents of CD

Track 7
title of composition: Harmonium # 1
year of composition: 1976
composer: James Tenney
performers: Trio Scordatura
date of recording: 3 October 2013
recording producer: recorded by Juan Parra Cancino
recording space: live recording during 2013 ORCiM Research Festival,
Orpheus Institute, Ghent, Belgium

Track 8
title of composition: …..sofferte onde serene…
year of composition: 1975/77
composer: Luigi Nono
performers: Paulo de Assis, piano. tape projection: Juan Parra
date of recording: 24 September 2013
recording producer: Juan Parra Cancino
recording space: Handelsbeurs, Ghent, Belgium

Track 9
title of composition: Aphorisme IX
year of composition: 2012
composer: Frederik Neyrinck
performers: Anne Davids (flute),
Dirk Moelants (viola da gamba),
Charlotte Otte (piano)
date of recording: 20 june 2013
recording producer: Wannes Gonnissen
recording space: Bijloke Studio (Ghent, Belgium)

381
 Appendix 3:
List of online video materials

As further illustration of some of the discussion in the articles in this anthol-

ogy, an online repository of video examples has been created and hosted within
the website of the Orpheus Institute, Ghent. These examples, which should be
viewed in connection with a reading of the relevant articles, may all be accessed
under the URL: http://www.orpheusinstituut.be/anthology/repository

1. Mieko Kanno (3 c li ps )

Video illustrations for the article “Order Matters: A Thought on How to

Practise” – Mieko Kanno

title of composition: Per Mattia

year of composition: 1975
composer: Salvatore Sciarrino
performers: Mieko Kanno
date of recording: 4 March 2013
recording producer: Bob Whitney
recording space: Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

2. Valentin Gloor/Anna Scott

Video illustrations for the article “Association and Selection: Towards a New
Flexibility in Form and Content of the Liederabend” – Valentin Gloor

Johannes Brahms: Sechs Gesänge Op. 3 no. 5, “In der Fremde” (1852-3)
Robert Schumann: Liederkreis Op. 39 no. 1, “In der Fremde” (1840)
Robert Schumann: Theme and Variations in E Flat WoO 24, “Thema” (1854)
date of recording: 25 March 2013
recording producer: Juan Parra
recording space: Concert Hall, Orpheus Institute, Ghent

383
 Appendix 3: List of online video materials

3. l a r r y p o lan sKy
Video illustrations for the article “What if ” – Larry Polansky

title of composition: ‫[ רבדמב‬B’midbar] [Numbers]) for piano and invited

speakers
(excerpt)
year of composition: 2008
composer: Larry Polansky
performers: Rory Cowal, piano
date of recording: 11 May 2012
recording space: University of California, Santa Cruz

4. Luk Vaes
Video illustrations for the article “On Kagel’s Experimental Sound Producers:
An Illustrated Interview with a Historical Performer” – Luk Vaes

title of composition: Acustica. For experimental sound producers and

loudspeakers.
year of composition: 1968-70
composer: Mauricio Kagel
performers: Theodor Ross,
Luk Vaes,
Seth Josel,
Jona Kesteleyn,
and participants in the workshop
date of recording: 3 October 2012
recording producer: Luk Vaes
recording space: Minard Schouwburg, Ghent

5. Juan Parra
Video illustrations for the article “On Life Is Too Precious: Blending Musical and
Research Goals through Experimentation” – Juan Parra

title of composition: Life is too precious…

year of composition: 2011
composer: Juan Parra Cancino
performers: Juan Parra Cancino, assisted by Kathleen Coessens
date of recording: October 2011
recording producer: recorded by Juan Parra Cancino
recording space: ORCiM 5 studio, Orpheus Institute, Ghent, Belgium
previously released on www.100dollarguitar.com

384
 Appendix 3: List of online video materials

6. Stefan Östersjö (6 c lips )

a) Video illustrations for the article “Kairos in the Flow of Musical Intuition” –
Kathleen Coessens, Stefan Östersjö

title of composition: Strandlines

year of composition: 2007
composer: Richard Karpen
performers: Stefan Östersjö
date of recording: 11 February 2007
recording producer: Josh Parmenter
recording space: DXARTS, Seattle

b) Video illustrations for the article “Habitus and the Resistance of Culture” –
Kathleen Coessens, Stefan Östersjö

INSIDE/OUTSIDE (2 clips)
title of composition: Inside/Outside (a clip from the making of the piece and one
excerpt from the performance)
year of composition: 2012
composer: Thanh Thuy, Nguyen & Marie Fahlin
performers: The Six Tones & Matt Wright
date of recording: 8 November 2012 (for the performance, the rehearsal
clip is from 5 November 2012)
recording producer: Matt Wright
recording space: Kim Ma Theatre, Hanoi

IDIOMS (1 clip)
title of composition: IDIOMS
year of composition: 2010-11
music: Richard Karpen,
The Six Tones;
writer and director: Jörgen Dahlqvist
performers: The Six Tones,
Manh Duc,
Nguyen
date of recording: 2 September 2011
recording producer: Jörgen Dahlqvist
recording space: Inter Arts Center

385
 Appendix 3: List of online video materials

c) Video illustrations for the article “Repetition, Resonance, and Discernment”

– Kathleen Coessens, Henrik Frisk, Stefan Östersjö

REPETITION REPEATS ALL OTHER REPETITIONS (2 clips)

title of composition: Repetition Repeats All Other Repetitions
year of composition: 2006
composer: Henrik Frisk
performer: Stefan Östersjö
date of recording: 26 January 2011
recording producer: Henrik Frisk
recording space: EMS (Electronic Music Studios, Stockholm)

386
 Appendix 4:
Resources for Artistic
Experimentation

Biggs, Michael, and Henrik Karlsson, eds. Harvard University Press.

2011. The Routledge Companion to Research ———, and Steve Woolgar. 1986. Laboratory
in the Arts. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. 2nd
Borgdorff, Henk. 2012. The Conflict of the ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Faculties: Perspectives on Artistic Research Press.
and Academia. Leiden: Leiden University Östersjö, Stefan, and Henrik Frisk, eds.
Press. 2013. (Re)Thinking Improvisation: Artistic
Cage, John. 1961. Silence: Lectures and Writings. Explorations and Conceptual Writing. Lund:
Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Lund University Press.
Press. Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. 1992. Experiment,
Coessens, Kathleen, Darla Crispin, and Differenz, Schrift: Zur Geschichte epistemicher
Anne Douglas. 2009. The Artistic Turn: Dinge. Marburg an der Lahn: Basilisken-
A Manifesto. Collected Writings of the Presse.
Orpheus Institute. Leuven: Leuven ———. 1997. Toward a History of Epistemic
University Press. Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube.
Cross, Jonathan, Jonathan Harvey, Helmut Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Lachenmann, Albrecht Wellmer, and ———. 2004. “Experimental Systems: Entry
Richard Klein, eds. 2004. Identity and Encyclopedia for the History of the Life
Difference: Essays on Music, Language and Sciences.” The Virtual Laboratory: Essays
Time. Collected Writings of the Orpheus and Resources on the Experimentalization of
Institute. Leuven: Leuven University Life, Max Planck Institute for the History
Press. of Science, Berlin. Accessed 09 May 2013.
Dombois, Florian, Ute Meta Bauer, Claudia http://vlp.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/essays/
Mareis, and Michael Schwab, eds. 2012. data/enc19?p=1.
Intellectual Birdhouse: Artistic Practice as ———. 2010a. An Epistemology of the
Research. London: Koenig Books. Concrete: Twentieth-Century Histories of
Feyerabend, Paul. 1988. Against Method. Rev. Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
ed. London: Verso. First published 2006 as Epistemologie
Friese, Peter, Guido Boulboullé, and des Konkreten (Frankfurt am Main:
Susanne Witzgall, eds. 2007. Say It Isn’t So: Suhrkamp).
Art Trains Its Sights on the Natural Sciences. ———. 2010b. On Historicizing Epistemology:
Heidelberg: Kehrer Verlag. Published in An Essay. Translated by David Fernbach.
conjunction with the exhibition of the Stanford, CA: Stanford University
same name, shown at the Weserburg, Press. First published 2007 as Historische
Museum für moderne Kunst, Bremen. Epistemologie zur Einführung (Hamburg:
Hacking, Ian. 1983. Representing and Junius).
Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Schatzki, Theodore R., Karin Knorr Cetina,
Philosophy of Natural Science. Cambridge: and Eike von Savigny, eds. 2001. The
Cambridge University Press. Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory.
Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action: How London: Routledge.
to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Schwab, Michael, ed. 2013. Experimental
Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Systems: Future Knowledge in Artistic
University Press. Research. Orpheus Institute Series.
———. 1999. Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Leuven: Leuven University Press.
Reality of Science Studies. Cambridge, MA:

387
389
390
391
 Notes on Contributors

Paulo de Assis is an artist-researcher with transdisciplinary interests in

Philosophy and Epistemology. He studied piano with, among others,
Vitaly Margulis and Alexis Weissenberg, and Musicology with Jürg Stenzl
and André Richard, receiving a PhD and a post-doctoral appointment on
the works of Luigi Nono. He was distinguished by the Fondation des Prix
Européens (1994) and at the International Competition Maria Canals,
Barcelona (1997). Between 2009 and 2012 he was Senior Researcher at the
Centre for the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music (CESEM) at the University
Nova Lisbon and Research Fellow at the Orpheus Research Centre in
Music [ORCiM]. For the period 2013-2018 he was granted a European
Research Council Starting Grant for the project “Experimentation versus
Interpretation: exploring new paths in music performance in the twen-
ty-first century,” hosted at the Orpheus Institute. He has authored two
books (on the music of Luigi Nono and Camillo Togni) and edited six oth-
ers (on sound, music notation and on contemporary composers).

Richard Barrett is internationally active as both composer and improvising

performer, and has collaborated with many leading performers in both
areas, while developing works and ideas which increasingly leave behind
the distinctions between them. His long-term collaborations include the
electronic duo FURT which he formed with Paul Obermayer in 1986 (and
its more recent octet version fORCH), composing for and performing with
the ELISION contemporary music group since 1990, and regular appear-
ances with the Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble since 2003. Recent
projects include CONSTRUCTION, a two-hour work for twenty-three per-
formers and three-dimensional sound system, premiered by ELISION in
2011, and the hour-long life-form for cello and electronics, premiered by
Arne Deforce in 2012. Current projects include world-line for electric lap
steel guitar, trumpet, percussion and electronics, commissioned by Daryl
Buckley, and new works for Ensemble Studio6 of Belgrade and for the
Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Stuttgart. He studied composition principally
with Peter Wiegold, and currently teaches at the Institute of Sonology in
The Hague and at Leiden University, having previously held a professorship
at Brunel University in London. His work as composer and performer is
documented on over 25 CDs, including six discs devoted to his composi-
tions and seven by FURT.

Tom Beghin is internationally active as a performer on historical keyboards. His

discography features Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Moscheles, C.P.E. Bach,
Mendelssohn, Zelter, Schubert, and Clementi. He has published in journals
such as Keyboard Perspectives, 19th Century Music and Haydn Studien, and in
collections such as Haydn and His World, The Cambridge Companion to Haydn,
or The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory. With classicist Sander Goldberg
he edited Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric, winner of the 2009 Ruth
Solie Award from the American Musicological Society. Forthcoming from
the The University of Chicago Press is his monograph The Virtual Haydn:

393
 Notes on Contributors

Paradox of a Twenty-First Century Keyboardist. Recognized for his expertise in

eighteenth-century music, he is frequently invited to give concerts, work-
shops and lectures throughout North America and Europe. In 2013 he
inaugurated the first replica of Beethoven’s 1817 Broadwood piano at the
Concertgebouw in Bruges and the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, playing among
others Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” Sonata, Opus 106. In 2004 the Haydn-
Institut inducted him as a member. Released by Naxos on Blu-ray (2009)
and CD/DVD (2011) is a complete recording of Haydn’s solo keyboard
works, performed on seven different types of instruments in nine “virtual
rooms.” He is presently focusing his artistic research on the piano works
of Ludwig van Beethoven. Tom Beghin studied at the Lemmens Institute
in Louvain, Belgium (with Alan Weiss), at the Musik-Akademie in Basel,
Switzerland (with Jean Goverts and Rudolf Buchbinder), and received his
doctoral degree with fortepianist Malcolm Bilson and musicologist James
Webster from Cornell University (Ithaca, New York). He served on the fac-
ulty at the University of California, Los Angeles, was a fellow at the National
Humanities Center (North Carolina), and is presently Associate Professor
at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University (Montreal, Canada),
where he teaches performance practice, fortepiano, and music history. He
is a member and serves on the board of directors of CIRMMT (Centre for
Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology).

William Brooks studied music and mathematics at Wesleyan University (BA

1965), then received degrees in musicology (MM 1971) and composition-the-
ory (DMA 1976) from the University of Illinois. He taught at the University
of California and the University of Illinois before becoming Professor of
Music at the University of York, England. In 2009 he was appointed Senior
Research Fellow at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent, Belgium, where he also
serves as publications editor. Brooks is active as both composer and musi-
cologist, with the two disciplines meeting in his interest in “experimental”
music and processes and in his exploration of the relationship between text
and music. He has published extensively on John Cage and Charles Ives and,
more broadly, on American music; his compositions often explore open
form and the intersection of vernacular and cultivated idioms. Much of his
music is for voice, and he is himself a singer and choral conductor. His music
is published by Frog Peak Music, and he has received commissions from the
Irish Arts Council, The Crossing, Trio Mediaeval, The Cleveland Chamber
Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, and the Gulbenkian Foundation, among
others. His awards include Woodrow Wilson and Danforth Foundation
graduate fellowships, a Smithsonian Institution Fellowship (1979-80), an
NEA Composer’s Fellowship (1982), an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship
(1986), and, in recent years, grants from the Arts and Humanities Research
Council (UK), Newberry Library (Chicago), Lilly Library (Indiana), and
Harry Ransom Center (Austin TX).

394
 Notes on Contributors

Nicholas G. Brown is an artist-composer and writer. He makes various kinds of

work, from films, installations and theatrical performances to handmade
books. He has also composed an extensive body of concert music and writ-
ten film scores that have been released on DVD by the British Film Institute.
His music has featured in festivals such as the BBC Promenade Concerts,
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Three Choirs Festival and
Haarlem Koorbiënnale (NL). As a writer, he has published articles on the
philosophy of music, particularly theories of music & embodiment. He was
educated at Oxford University and Manhattan School of Music, New York.

Marcel Cobussen studied jazz piano at the Conservatory of Rotterdam and Art
and Cultural Studies at Erasmus University, Rotterdam (the Netherlands).
He currently teaches Music Philosophy and Auditory Culture at Leiden
University (the Netherlands) and the Orpheus Institute. Cobussen is author
of the book Thresholds: Rethinking Spirituality Through Music (Ashgate, 2008),
editor of Resonanties. Verkenningen tussen kunsten en wetenschappen (LUP, 2011)
and co-author of Music and Ethics (Ashgate, 2012) and Dionysos danst weer.
Essays over hedendaagse muziekbeleving (Kok Agora, 1996). He is editor-in-chief
of the open access online Journal of Sonic Studies (www.sonicstudies.org). His
Ph.D. dissertation Deconstruction in Music (2002) is presented as an online
website located at www.deconstruction-in-music.com.

Kathleen Coessens is a philosopher and artist, exploring the crossings of sci-

ence and art, perception and imagination, embodiment and epistemology.
She graduated in piano and chamber music in Paris (Ecole Normale de
Musique Alfred Cortot) and Brussels (Royal Conservatoire), and in philos-
ophy, sociology and psychology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. In her PhD
in philosophy she investigated cartography and mapping as fundamental
aspects of the human condition. With this background in both art and
human sciences, she works as a professor and post-doc researcher at the
Vrije Universiteit Brussel in the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science
(CLWF), at the Orpheus Research Centre in Music (ORCiM), Ghent, and
at the Conservatoires of Antwerp and Brussels. Beyond teaching semiotics
and sociology of artistic practice and artistic research, she supervises PhD
students. She recently launched the artistic research group CORPoREAL
on embodied practices in performance arts at the Conservatoire Antwerp.
Topics of research in the arts are perception, experimentation, imagination
and the corporeality of the artist. Her artistic research practice is linked to
both a broad philosophical and artistic research output and to an artistic
practice. She has published many writings on and in artistic research —
including the book The Artistic Turn, 2009, with Darla Crispin and Anne
Douglas. She creates, performs and collaborates in artistic projects (with
Champ d’Action, Antwerp; Grays School of Art, Aberdeen; ORCiM, Ghent)
merging visual and performance arts and exploring the boundaries between
the cultural and the ecological, between arts and life.

395
 Notes on Contributors

Paul Craenen is a composer, music teacher, and director. As a maker and teacher
of music, he links a classical training to work with the newest instruments
and techniques. In his role as a researcher and director, he attempts to
bridge the gap between existing music practice, scientific findings, and the
wider cultural context in which musical activity can unfurl. He earned his
master’s degree in piano and chamber music from the Lemmensinstituut in
Leuven, Belgium. Since then he has taught piano and experimental music
at various music schools. He has designed several pioneering educational
projects involving new music and the use of new media in music education.
He has been a composer and sound artist since the late 1990s. He has taken
part in several international composition seminars and his compositions
have been performed in Belgium and abroad at a range of new music fes-
tivals. Conceptuality, the use of electronics and choreographic and audio-
visual elements are characteristic of his compositions. Another ongoing
theme in his work is attention to corporeal presence in music performance.
He began postgraduate research into this subject at the Orpheus Institute
in Ghent, later pursuing it through docARTES, a doctoral programme for
practice-oriented research in the arts. He has been a member of various
research groups and was a guest lecturer on intermediality at Amsterdam
Conservatory for several years. On 29 March 2011 he received his doctorate
from Leiden University with a musical portfolio and the thesis on which
this book is based. Since 2012 he has been the director of Musica, Impulse
Centre for Music.

Darla Crispin is an Associate Professor of Musicology at the Norwegian

Academy of Music (NMH), Oslo. She works there as a member of a research
team of pianists, composers and musicologists exploring collaborative
and interdisciplinary research techniques and their application to both
newly-composed and canonical piano repertoire. A Canadian pianist and
scholar with a Concert Recital Diploma from the Guildhall School of Music
& Drama, London and a PhD in Historical Musicology from King’s College,
London, Darla specialises in musical modernity, and especially in the music
of the Second Viennese School. Her most recent work examines this reper-
toire through the prism of artistic research in music, a process that has been
reinforced through her work as a Research Fellow at the Orpheus Research
Centre in Music from 2008 – 2013. As well as developing her own research,
Darla has been responsible for the development of innovative postgradu-
ate programmes in two leading UK Conservatoires: the Guildhall School
of Music & Drama and, from 2002-8 the Royal College of Music, where she
was the founding Head of the College’s Graduate School, overseeing both
Masters and Doctoral programmes. She is an Honorary Member of the RCM,
a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Advisory Board for
the Platform for Artistic Research (PARSE) for the Faculty of Fine, Applied
and Performing Arts, the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Darla’s pub-
lications include a collaborative volume with Kathleen Coessens and Anne
Douglas, The Artistic Turn: A Manifesto (Leuven, 2009) and numerous book

396
 Notes on Contributors

chapters and articles. Some of the more recent of these include ‘Allotropes
of Advocacy: a model for categorizing persuasiveness in musical perfor-
mances’, co-authored with Jeremy Cox, in Music & Practice, Vol. 1 (1) 2013
and ‘Of Arnold Schoenberg’s Klavierstück Op. 33a, “a Game of Chess,” and
the Emergence of New Epistemic Things’, in Experimental Systems – Future
Knowledge in Artistic Research, ed. Michael Schwab (Leuven 2014). She is cur-
rently working on a book entitled The Solo Piano Works of the Second Viennese
School: Performance, Ethics and Understanding (Boydell & Brewer).

Henrik Frisk (PhD) is an active performer (saxophones and laptop) of impro-

vised and contemporary music and a composer of acoustic and computer
music. With a special interest in interactivity, most of the projects he engages
in explores interactivity in one way or another. As an artistic researcher he
has, among other things, contributed to the Routledge Companion to Research
in the Arts. Frisk is assistant professor at the Royal Academy of Music and the
Malmö Academy of Music, Lund University.

Bob Gilmore is a musicologist writing about recent contemporary music in

western and central Europe and north America. His work falls into the
categories of composer biography, music theory and analysis, and the crit-
ical historiography of music. Areas of specialism include American experi-
mental music, microtonal and spectral music, and the new music scene in
Ireland. He has written about music of highly diverse kinds, manifesting
strongly divergent aesthetic positions; the underlying thread is a fasci-
nation with creative individuals with strong, distinct identities. He is the
author of Harry Partch: a biography (Yale University Press, 1998), recipient of
an ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for works of excellence on American music,
and Claude Vivier: a composer’s life (University of Rochester Press, 2014). He
is director and keyboard player of Trio Scordatura, an Amsterdam-based
ensemble specialising in music exploring alternative tuning systems. He has
taught at Queens University Belfast, Dartington College of Arts and Brunel
University in London. In September 2013 he became a Research Fellow at
the Orpheus Institute. He is Editor of Tempo, the UK-based journal of new
music.

Valentin Gloor (tenor) achieved his diplomas at the Music University

Winterthur-Zurich (P. Steiner) and at the University of Music and Dramatic
Arts Graz (U. Bästlein) with distinction and got a prize of appreciation for
outstanding performance at Graz. He attended master classes by Charles
Spencer, Norman Shetler, Brigitte Fassbaender, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
and others. In up to 100 concerts a year he performs a broad repertoire,
starting in the Renaissance and leading up to a number of premières. He
achieved further specialization in lied and oratorio, and he participates in
opera projects. He has released a number of CD recordings and he sang on
tours to the US, to South Corea, Hongkong, Mainland China and Brazil. He
completed his doctoral studies at the University of Music and Dramatic Arts

397
 Notes on Contributors

Graz in 2013 with distinction, and since summer 2013 has been carrying on
his research work on performance concepts as an ORCiM Research Fellow.

Yolande Harris xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xx xxxxxxxx xxxxxx

xxxxxxxx xxxxx ....

Mieko Kanno specialises in the combined disciplines of performance and musi-

cology in contemporary music. Since her winning of the Kranichsteiner
Musikpreis at the Darmstadt New Music Institute in 1994 for the interpre-
tation of contemporary music, she has collaborated with many composers
Europe-wide, commissioned and premiered new works, and has estab-
lished herself as one of the leading exponents of contemporary music.
Her current long-term projects are on John Cage’s Freeman Etudes and on
music involving electronics (Mieko works on the AHRC funded project
“Live Performance, the Interactive Computer and the Violectra,” a collab-
oration with composer Sam Hayden). She regularly performs these works
in concerts–she is interested in how musical works change their identity
with time and this research is much informed by her practice. In addition
to her solo work Mieko is widely experienced as ensemble violinist and has
been a leading participant in groups such as the New Music Players, Exposé,
Apartment House, the Utrecht-based ensemble insomnio and others. She
also plays the Baroque violin and has toured worldwide with the ensemble
Florilegium. Her background is the traditional school of violin playing: at
the age of 19 she was invited to England to study with Yfrah Neaman at the
Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and achieved outstanding success in
numerous violin competitions including the Rodolfo Lipizer Competition
Italy (First Prize), London Carl Flesch Competition (Third Prize), Queen
Elisabeth Competition Belgium (Bronze Medal), Tokyo International
Violin Competition (Third Prize), Hannover Competition (Fifth Prize) and
Jacques Thibaud Competition, Paris (Sixth Prize). Since then she has been
performing worldwide and continues to do so today. Mieko was Head of
Performance at Durham University Music Department for 2001-2012. She
has held residencies at the Dartington Summer School (last in 2007), the
Banff Arts Centre (Canada, 2008), and was Research Fellow at the Orpheus
Institute (2008-10, part-funded by the Leverhulme Trust) and at the Cini
Foundation (Venice, 2010). She joined the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
(RCS) in January 2013 as new Head of Strings.

398
 Notes on Contributors

Andrew Lawrence-King: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xx xxxxxxxx

xxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxx ....

Catherine Laws is a pianist and musicologist. She is a Senior Lecturer in Music

at the University of York and a Research Fellow at the Orpheus Institute. As
a performer Catherine specializes in contemporary music. In additional to
her solo work, she performs with two ensembles: the music theatre group
Black Hair and amplified experimental ensemble [rout]. Catherine’s current
practice-led research is concerned with: 1) embodiment and subjectivity in
contemporary performance; 2) processes of collaboration between com-
posers and performers. Much of her musicological work examines the rela-
tionship between music, language and meaning: her book, Headaches Among
the Overtones: Music in Beckett/ Beckett in Music was published by Editions
Rodopi in 2013. Other recent publications include editing and contributing
to the ORCiM publication The Practice of Practising, and editing the special
journal issue ‘On Listening’ for Performance Research.

Stefan Östersjö is one of the most prominent soloists within new music in
Sweden. Since his debut CD (Swedish Grammy in 1997) he has recorded
extensively and toured Europe, the US and Asia. His special fields of inter-
est are the interaction with electronics, and experimental work with dif-
ferent kinds of stringed instruments other than the classical guitar. As a
soloist he has cooperated with conductors such as Lothar Zagrosek, Peter
Eötvös, Pierre André Valade, Mario Venzago, Franck Ollu, Andrew Manze
and Tuomas Ollila. The past ten years he has been deeply involved in inter-
cultural work, most notably with the Vietnamese/Swedish group The Six
Tones. His thesis SHUT UP ‘N’ PLAY! Negotiating the Musical Work is pub-
lished by Lund University as are two edited books: (re)thinking Improvisation:
artistic explorations and conceptual writing (2012) (co-edited with Henrik Frisk)
and Spår av Musik (2014). He is at present engaged in artistic research on
musical gesture at the Malmö Academy of Music and, since 2009, engaged
as a Research Fellow at the Orpheus Institute. He is currently also working
in a CMPCP project together with the composer David Gorton and prof
Eric Clarke and in the AHRC-funded environmental sound art project
Landscape Quartet headed by Newcastle University.

399
 Notes on Contributors

Juan Parra Cancino studied Composition at the Catholic University of Chile

and Sonology at The Royal Conservatoire of The Hague (NL). Part of sev-
eral ensembles related to Guitar Craft, a school founded by Robert Fripp,
he is a regular collaborator of artists like Brice Soniano, Richard Craig and
Ensemble KLANG. Juan is founder and active member of The Electronic
Hammer (a computer and percussion trio) and Wiregriot (voice and elec-
tronics). He is currently a PhD candidate of Leiden University (NL) and his
research focuses on performance practice in Computer Music, supported
by the Prins Bernhard Cultuur Fonds. He is also a researcher at the Orpheus
Institute.

Larry Polansky is a composer, theorist, teacher, writer, performer, programmer,

editor and publisher. He lives in Santa Cruz, California, teaching at UC
Santa Cruz. He is also the Emeritus Strauss Professor of Music at Dartmouth
College, and co-director and co-founder of Frog Peak Music.

Stephen Preston established an international reputation as a pioneering

period instrument performer. He was involved as a founder member with
the UK’s leading period-instrument ensembles of the 1970s and made pio-
neering recordings of major works for baroque flute. Subsequently, pursu-
ing his interest in dance, he worked as choreographer and director for two
decades. In 2001, reapplying himself to the baroque flute he undertook a
doctoral research project into improvisation and performance techniques
modelled on birdsong, which resulted in the development of Ecosonics and
the formation of the Ecosonic Ensemble. Recently, with the aim of enrich-
ing contemporary practice and thinking about historical instruments, he
formed TRIO APORIA, which since 2012 has commissioned a wide reper-
toire of acoustic and electro-acoustic music. Currently Trio Aporia is col-
laborating with Jean-Philippe Calvin on a composition research project
focused on Jean-Philippe Rameau. Stephen also performs with the elec-
tro-acoustic improvisation group Automatic Writing Circle, an evolution
from his Ecosonic Ensemble.. In addition to playing historically derived
instruments he plays the Beaudin flute, a 21st century evolution of the
one-keyed flute developed by French Canadian flute maker Jean-François
Beaudin. He teaches at the Royal Northern College of Music and at Trinity
Laban.

Godfried-Willem Raes is a music-maker in the broadest sense of the word.

Until 2014 he was Professor of Composition and Acoustics at the Ghent
School of Arts. Nowadays he is mostly charged with post-doctoral research
into extending expressive possibilities of acoustic instruments and their
human interfaces. He is the designer of what has become known as the larg-
est robot orchestra in the world and the inventor of a fully wireless expres-
sive gesture recognition system (the invisible instrument, the topic of his
doctoral dissertation). At this moment he is working on the refinement of
automated musical instruments with playing possibilities that by far exceed

400
 Notes on Contributors

anything possible by humans. He was awarded the Louis Paul Boon prize
(1982), the Tech-Art Prize (1990) and has been Cultural Ambassador of
Flanders (1997). He is the founder and director of the Ghent-based Logos
Foundation.

Hans Roels is a Ph.D. researcher in the School of Arts, University College

Ghent, Belgium where he teaches live electronic music. Since 2010 he has
also worked as a researcher in the Orpheus Institute. Hans Roels studied
piano and composition and during the fifteen years that he has been active
as a professional composer his works were played in several European coun-
tries by ensembles such as Champ d’Action, Spectra ensemble, the electric
guitar quartet Zwerm and Trio Scordatura. Between 2001 and 2008 he was
responsible for the concert programming in the Logos Foundation, a cen-
tre for experimental audio arts.

Michael Schwab is an artist and artistic researcher who interrogates post-con-

ceptual uses of technology in a variety of media including photography,
drawing, printmaking and installation art. He holds a PhD in photogra-
phy from the Royal College of Art, London, that focuses on post-con-
ceptual post-photography and artistic research methodology. He works
as a researcher for the Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland, and is a
research fellow at Orpheus Institute, Ghent, and the University of Applied
Arts, Vienna. He has presented his art and research in a number of publi-
cations, exhibitions, invited keynote lectures, conference papers and sem-
inars. Since 2003 his exhibitions and associated events have increasingly
focused on artistic research, and he has been a collaborator and advisor on
a number of research projects. He is co-initiator and inaugural Editor-in-
Chief of JAR, the Journal for Artistic Research.

Anna Scott is a Canadian pianist-researcher interested in using the early 20th

century recordings of the Brahms-Schumann circle of pianists to question
the persistent gaps between the loci of knowledge, ethics and act in main-
stream, historically-informed, and recordings-informed approaches to
Brahms’s late piano works. Far from advocating more historically accurate
performances in general, Anna’s off-the-record experiments both elucidate
and disturb modern constructions of Brahms’s Classicist canonic identity
by encouraging the emergence of the corporeal and psychological conun-
drums more characteristically associated with Romantic pianism. Anna is
an ORCiM Doctoral Researcher at The Orpheus Institute, a Masters Artistic
Research Coach at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and is currently
pursuing a practice-led doctoral degree under the supervision of Daniel
Leech-Wilkinson (King’s College, London), Naum Grubert (Conservatories
of The Hague and Amsterdam), and Frans de Ruiter (Leiden University,
NL).

401
 Notes on Contributors

Steve Tromans is a pianist and composer working predominantly in the fields

of jazz and improvising music. He has given over 6,000 performances in the
UK, Europe and internationally, has recorded two dozen albums in his own
name, as well as having contributed keyboard work and compositions to
a host of others’ releases. Tromans has received major commissions from
Birmingham Town Hall/Symphony Hall and the arts organisation Jazzlines,
and was featured on BBC Radio Three’s “Jazz on 3” programme in Summer
2013 in light of his collaboration with improvising musicians from the
avant-garde scene in Chicago. In recent years, Tromans has been undertak-
ing doctoral research into creative process in improvised performance.

Luk Vaes studied piano with Claude Coppens (Belgium), Aloys Kontarsky
(Germany) and Yvar Mikhashoff (US), won first prizes in several interna-
tional competitions, and has concertised as a soloist at the most renowned
festivals for new music as well as with musicians such as Uri Caine and
Thomas Quasthoff. His recordings of the piano works of Mauricio Kagel
won nine international prizes. In 2009 he obtained his doctorate with a
dissertation on the theory, history and performance practice of extended
piano techniques. Currently he is fellow in artistic research of the ORCiM
group, and coordinates the doctoral program for musicians at the Orpheus
Institute and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.

Bart Vanhecke studied composition with André Laporte at the Royal Music
Conservatory in Brussels and with Franco Donatoni at the Accademia
Musicale Chigiana in Siena (Italy). Since 2009 he is researching the sys-
tematisation of atonality and dissonance in amotivic serial composition
at the Orpheus Institute in Ghent and the University of Leuven. In 2010
he received a doctoral research grant from the University of Leuven and
he became a doctoral researcher at ORCiM. Works by Bart Vanhecke have
been performed at festivals including Ars Musica, the ISCM World Music
Days and the Transit Festival, by ensembles and soloists such as the Neue
Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Ensemble Recherche, Ensemble Phœnix Basel,
the Belgian National Orchestra, Het Collectief, Walpurgis, the Spectra
Ensemble, Ictus, Jan Michiels, the Danel Quartet and many others.

402
Author This book is published in the Orpheus Institute
Darla Crispin Series
Bob Gilmore
© 014 by Leuven University Press /
Authors
Universitaire Pers Leuven /
Paulo de Assis
Presses Universitaires de Louvain.
Richard Barrett
Minderbroedersstraat 4 B–3000 Leuven
Tom Beghin
(Belgium)
William Brooks
Nicholas G. Brown All rights reserved. Except in those cases
Marcel Cobussen expressly determined by law, no part of this
Kathleen Coessens publication may be multiplied, saved in
Paul Craenen automated data file or made public in any way
Darla Crispin whatsoever without the express prior written
Bob Gilmore consent of the publishers.
Valentin Gloor
ISBN 978 94 6270 013 0
Yolande Harris
D/2014/1869/57
Mieko Kanno
NUR: 336, 664, 669
Andrew Lawrence-King
Catherine Laws
Stefan Östersjö
Juan Parra Cancino
Larry Polansky
Stephen Preston This is the first anthology of writings on artistic ex-
Godfried-Willem Raes perimentation in music. It is a result of the artistic
Hans Roels research conducted by ORCiM researchers within
Michael Schwab the centre’s Research Focus 2010–2013 on Artistic
Anna Scott Experimentation in Music.
Steve Tromans
Luk Vaes This book is published in the Orpheus Institute
Bart Vanhecke Series.

Copy editor
Edward Crooks
Editorial assistant
Anna Scott
Series editor
William Brooks
Lay-out
Studio Luc Derycke
Typesetting
Friedemann BVBA
Audio CD mastering
Juan Parra Cancino
The Orpheus Institute has been providing postgraduate education for musi-
cians since 1996 and introduced the first doctoral programme for music prac-
titioners in Flanders (2004). Acting as an umbrella institution for Flanders, it
is co-governed by the music and dramatic arts departments of all four Flemish
colleges, which are strongly involved in its operation.
Throughout the Institute’s various activities (seminars, conferences, work-
shops and associated events) there is a clear focus on the development of a new
research discipline in the arts: one that addresses questions and topics that are
at the heart of musical practice, building on the unique expertise and perspec-
tives of musicians and constantly dialoguing with more established research
disciplines.
Within this context, the Orpheus Institute launched an international
Research Centre in 2007 that acts as a stable constituent within an ever grow-
ing field of enquiry. The Orpheus Research Centre in Music [ORCiM] is a
place where musical artists can fruitfully conduct individual and collaborative
research on issues that are of concern to all involved in artistic practice. The
development of a disciplinespecific discourse in the field of artistic research in
music is the core mission of ORCiM.
The Orpheus Institute Series encompasses monographs by fellows and associ-
ates of the Orpheus Institute, compilations of lectures and texts from seminars
and study days, and edited volumes on topics arising from work at the institute.
Research can be presented in digital media as well as printed texts. As a whole,
the series is meant to enhance and advance discourse in the field of artistic
research in music and to generate future work in this emerging and vital area
of study.

Other titles in this series:

– Experimental Systems:
Future Knowledge in Artistic Research
Michael Schwab (ed.)
2013, ISBN 978 90 5867 973 4

– Sound & Score:

Essays on Sound, Score and Notation
Paulo de Assis, William Brooks, Kathleen Coessens (eds.)
2013, ISBN 978 90 5867 976 5

– Composing under the Skin:

The Music-making Body at the Composer’s Desk
Paul Craenen
2013, ISBN 978 90 5867 974 1

– Multiple Paths (CD):

Bach / Parra / Tenney
Juan Parra Cancino, with Ensemble Modelo62
2014