Performance, Subjectivity, and Experimentation

Performance in the fields of contemporary music, subjectivity and identity

Music reflects subjectivity and identity: that idea is now deeply ingrained in both musicology and popular media commentary. The study of music across cultures and practices often addresses the enactment of subjectivity “in” music – how music expresses or represents “an” individual or “a” group. However, a sense of selfhood is also formed and continually reformed through musical practices, not least performance. How does this take place? How might the work of practitioners reveal aspects of this process? In what sense is subjectivity performed in and through musical practices? This book explores these questions in relation to a range of artistic research involving contemporary music, drawing on perspectives from performance studies, phenomenology, embodied cognition, and theories of gendered and cultural identity.

Contributors: Steve Benford (University of Nottingham), Richard Craig (freelance performer and researcher), David Gorton (Royal Academy of Music, London), Christopher Greenhalgh (University of Nottingham), Adrian Hazzard (University of Nottingham), Juliana Hodkinson (Grieg Academy, University of Bergen), Maria Kallionpää (Aalborg University), Zubin Kanga (Royal Holloway, University of London), Catherine Laws (University of York/Orpheus Institute), Jin Hyung Lim (Keimyung University), Thanh Thủy Nguyễn (Malmö Academy of Music, Lund University/Vietnam National Academy of Music), Stefan Östersjö (Piteå School of Music, Luleå University of Technology/Orpheus Institute), Deniz Peters (University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz), Eleanor Roberts (University of Roehampton), Anne Veinberg (Orpheus Institute)

This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Introduction Catherine Laws
Between I and You in Music: Shared Emotions, Relational Improvisation, and Artistic Research Deniz Peters
Moving and Being Moved: Affective Resonance at Play in Sonic Performances Juliana Hodkinson
Negotiating the Discursive Voice in Chamber Music David Gorton and Stefan Östersjö
Deus ex Disklavier: Subjectivity and Technological Resistance in the Performance of Maria Kallionpää’s Climb! for Disklavier and Electronics Zubin Kanga, Anne Veinberg, Maria Kallionpää, Adrian Hazzard, Chris Greenhalgh and Steve Benford
“by way of the BREATH, to the LINE” Richard Craig
Performing Being a Pianist: Gender and Embodied Subjectivity in Performing Annea Lockwood’s Ceci n’est pas un pianoCatherine Laws
Charlotte Moorman and “Avant-Garde Music”: A Feminist History of Performance Experimentation Eleanor Roberts
Inside the Choreography of Gender Nguyễn Thanh Thủy and Stefan Östersjö
Identity Performance and Performing Identity: Performing Isang Yun’s Fünf Stücke für Klavier (1958) Jin Hyung Lim
Notes on Contributors Index

Catherine Laws

Catherine Laws is a pianist, reader in Music at the University of York, and senior artistic research fellow at the Orpheus Institute.