Music Composition as Interdisciplinary Practice
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Surrey
Department Name: Music
Abstract
This research will investigate interdisciplinarity as it occurs in the practice of music composition by establishing a network of composers (working inside and outside academia), scholars and leaders of arts organisations to undertake reflective practice, present academic papers and take part in panel discussions. The network will focus on the processes and practices of interdisciplinarity in order to better understand it as an approach to music composition. Of particular, although not exclusive, interest are examples of interdisciplinarity in which a single individual is working between two or more disciplines using methodologies from each. Such individuals may not be trained as composers first and foremost; as long as the creation of music (very broadly defined) is part of their practice then they will be of interest to the network. The research will be guided by three questions: how does composition as interdisciplinary practice reflect different kinds of interdisciplinarity; how do organisations facilitate composition as interdisciplinary practice; how might composition as interdisciplinary practice be illuminated by, and itself illuminate, research on musical creativity?
The research will be undertaken through practice, scholarship and facilitated discussion. Three months into the life of the network three projects will be selected by the network advisory group following a call for proposals. Successful applicants will be supported by a fee of £500 each in order to develop an artistic project for performance or exhibition at the mini-festival that concludes the network activities. Network project artists will document their creative processes (via the network website) in order to provide insights into creativities within interdisciplinary compositional practice. The main forum for scholars during the life of the network will be a two-day symposium in April 2016. This will involve the presentation of academic papers providing critiques and/or historical overviews of interdisciplinary artistic practices involving composition. Facilitated discussion will be a feature of the initial one-day seminar and the concluding mini-festival and will provide a means by which leaders of artistic organisations and practitioners can contribute knowledge to the network.
This research is required to fill certain gaps in the study of interdiscilpinarity within the performing arts. Although centres that conduct interdisciplinary research in music composition are common they tend not to interrogate the concept of interdisciplinarity itself; such critiques as exist come mainly from philosophers of science and so often bypass performing arts research in favour of interdisciplinarity applied to the solution of complex, 'real world' problems. Research into compositional creativity has yet to comprehensively investigate composers working between disciplines, instead the romantic model of the individual composer remains the chief object of study.
The aims of this research, therefore, are threefold: to critically examine the practice of composition in a range of interdisciplinary contexts; to understand the conditions necessary for composition as interdisciplinary practice to thrive and how to create them; finally, to contribute to the understanding and evaluation of creativity in composition as interdisciplinary practice.
The three network activities (one-day seminar, two-day symposium and mini-festival) have been designed to appeal to a broad audience inside and outside academia with research specialities and general interests in practice as research in the performing arts, collaboration, creativity experimental music, performance, multimedia, installation, dance and theatre. It is hoped that the outcomes of the research will also be of benefit to performing arts teachers at tertiary and HE level, community arts practitioners, curators, programmers, promoters and arts policy directors.
The research will be undertaken through practice, scholarship and facilitated discussion. Three months into the life of the network three projects will be selected by the network advisory group following a call for proposals. Successful applicants will be supported by a fee of £500 each in order to develop an artistic project for performance or exhibition at the mini-festival that concludes the network activities. Network project artists will document their creative processes (via the network website) in order to provide insights into creativities within interdisciplinary compositional practice. The main forum for scholars during the life of the network will be a two-day symposium in April 2016. This will involve the presentation of academic papers providing critiques and/or historical overviews of interdisciplinary artistic practices involving composition. Facilitated discussion will be a feature of the initial one-day seminar and the concluding mini-festival and will provide a means by which leaders of artistic organisations and practitioners can contribute knowledge to the network.
This research is required to fill certain gaps in the study of interdiscilpinarity within the performing arts. Although centres that conduct interdisciplinary research in music composition are common they tend not to interrogate the concept of interdisciplinarity itself; such critiques as exist come mainly from philosophers of science and so often bypass performing arts research in favour of interdisciplinarity applied to the solution of complex, 'real world' problems. Research into compositional creativity has yet to comprehensively investigate composers working between disciplines, instead the romantic model of the individual composer remains the chief object of study.
The aims of this research, therefore, are threefold: to critically examine the practice of composition in a range of interdisciplinary contexts; to understand the conditions necessary for composition as interdisciplinary practice to thrive and how to create them; finally, to contribute to the understanding and evaluation of creativity in composition as interdisciplinary practice.
The three network activities (one-day seminar, two-day symposium and mini-festival) have been designed to appeal to a broad audience inside and outside academia with research specialities and general interests in practice as research in the performing arts, collaboration, creativity experimental music, performance, multimedia, installation, dance and theatre. It is hoped that the outcomes of the research will also be of benefit to performing arts teachers at tertiary and HE level, community arts practitioners, curators, programmers, promoters and arts policy directors.
Planned Impact
The following groups will benefit from the research:
- Performing arts practitioners
- Students studying performing arts subjects at HE and tertiary level
- Teachers of performing arts subjects at tertiary level
- Performing arts teams within examination boards, e.g. chief examiners
- Community arts practitioners
- Curators, programmers, promoters, arts policy directors and administrators
- Leaders of artistic organisations concerned with interdisciplinary practice
The research is relevant to the above in a variety of ways. It is process-focussed so it will uncover types of creativities and skills involved in the practice of music composition in an interdisciplinary performing arts context. It is articulated via critical and historical discourses which will suggest neglected or new approaches to practice and, in turn, reveal potential new repertoire. By many definitions much interdisciplinary practice occurs at the exploratory edges of a field so the research can illuminate and bring to greater awareness work that is currently being undertaken at such extremes. A more nuanced picture of interdisciplinarity that illustrates different approaches can help improve programming and commissioning strategies by providing a clearer understanding of its nature. The research will provide insights into strategies for facilitating interdisciplinarity in organisations but those concerned with the day to day realities of operation and working within contemporary research funding environments at a project, not institutional, level.
The research will enhance cultural enrichment and quality of life by initiating creative practice and disseminating it through public performances. These performances will be contextualised by practitioners themselves, thus helping to refine impact. The documentation of creative practice in progress will be made accessible via the network website, facilitating a transparent view of the creative process in an interdisciplinary context. Workshops will be led by creative practitioners wherein they can practically demonstrate new and innovative techniques; these events may also provide some measure of training for skilled people for non academic purposes.
In order to accelerate dissemination during the life of the network (and without the longer turnaround required by the post-network special edition) initial reports of activities and write-ups of the research will be published on the website of Sound and Music who are represented on the Network Advisory Group. This can be achieved via the 'Sampler' blog section of their website. The network's own website will also be used for this purpose.
- Performing arts practitioners
- Students studying performing arts subjects at HE and tertiary level
- Teachers of performing arts subjects at tertiary level
- Performing arts teams within examination boards, e.g. chief examiners
- Community arts practitioners
- Curators, programmers, promoters, arts policy directors and administrators
- Leaders of artistic organisations concerned with interdisciplinary practice
The research is relevant to the above in a variety of ways. It is process-focussed so it will uncover types of creativities and skills involved in the practice of music composition in an interdisciplinary performing arts context. It is articulated via critical and historical discourses which will suggest neglected or new approaches to practice and, in turn, reveal potential new repertoire. By many definitions much interdisciplinary practice occurs at the exploratory edges of a field so the research can illuminate and bring to greater awareness work that is currently being undertaken at such extremes. A more nuanced picture of interdisciplinarity that illustrates different approaches can help improve programming and commissioning strategies by providing a clearer understanding of its nature. The research will provide insights into strategies for facilitating interdisciplinarity in organisations but those concerned with the day to day realities of operation and working within contemporary research funding environments at a project, not institutional, level.
The research will enhance cultural enrichment and quality of life by initiating creative practice and disseminating it through public performances. These performances will be contextualised by practitioners themselves, thus helping to refine impact. The documentation of creative practice in progress will be made accessible via the network website, facilitating a transparent view of the creative process in an interdisciplinary context. Workshops will be led by creative practitioners wherein they can practically demonstrate new and innovative techniques; these events may also provide some measure of training for skilled people for non academic purposes.
In order to accelerate dissemination during the life of the network (and without the longer turnaround required by the post-network special edition) initial reports of activities and write-ups of the research will be published on the website of Sound and Music who are represented on the Network Advisory Group. This can be achieved via the 'Sampler' blog section of their website. The network's own website will also be used for this purpose.
Organisations
| Title | How to Play a Room |
| Description | Choreographer Jan Lee looks at the interdisciplinary possibilities of music and dance that lie beyond juxtaposition. Her dancers become musicians through both the musical structures they respond to and their 'playing' of the space and objects within it. Jan explores how dancers' receptivity to sound can take centre stage, re-locating it in their bodies and making their physical presence part of the substance of the composition. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2016 |
| Impact | Performance at the Ivy Arts Centre during Sounds Between: Interdisciplinary Encounters in Music Composition, the one-day festival that concluded the network's activities. The performance allowed Jan, choreographer and artistic director, to continue the development of her practice in an interdisciplinary direction and this has continued in her work since. |
| Title | PLACE HATCHAM |
| Description | The project PLACE HATCHAM was developed in the area of New Cross, where both composers and performers were based, and which roughly corresponds to what in past times was known as Hatcham. The selected place was St Catherine's Church through which the authors became closely involved with the community of Telegraph Hill and devised two pieces about the place and its multidimensional richness. CONCORDANTIA DISCORDANTIA CANONUM and Where is the Person with Sixteen Parts? were both created site-specifically and are now being adapted to "neutral" spaces, a process which in PLACE is intended as an experiment, concentrating on what happens when a place is brought into another through performative works. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2016 |
| Impact | PLACE HATCHAM is part of an ongoing series of works that reach out into the area around New Cross in London, springing from and linked to the local community there. |
| Title | You Can See Yourself from the Other Side of the Room |
| Description | Focussing on the Zapruder film (the accidental home movie record of JFK's assassination) Jamie Hamilton and Dom Czapski explore the perception of meaning and the mass media through a devised theatrical montage of movement, speech, sound and multiple found sources. Exploring the thresholds of dance, writing and music practices it takes the form of a series of re-enactments, spoofs, rip-offs and appropriations |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2016 |
| Impact | You Can See Yourself... feeds into Jamie's and Dom's work with London Topophobia, a group of artists, working with sound/music composition, choreography/dance research and performance, performance art, electronics and light/sound installation. London Topophobia is a nexus at which artists from different disciplines can share their work at different points in its creative process. It is an alternative view on the potential of the London performance art scene at this point in the political and economic terrain of the UK. |
| Title | sweet-ERROR:miku |
| Description | (sweet-ERROR: miku) is the first iteration of a new project by squib-box, exploring questions of the self and body image in the digital realm. In this performance we take jarringly oppositional 'characters' and mash them together into a syncretic melting pot of a J-pop inspired family-friendly stadium rock performance. Hatsune Miku is the most prominent of Japan's 'Vocaloid' stars. Completely digital and more or less open source, she is powered by Yamaha voice synthesis software, and a range of animation programmes. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2016 |
| Impact | The performance at Surrey allowed Neil Luck (a member of squib-box) to trial the technology he is now employing in a new piece for Aarhus, Denmark, a 'City Opera' as part of their capital of culture programme. |
| Description | The work we have encountered and discussed has ranged from the inherently interdisciplinary, for example sonic art, data sonification, to hybrid practices such as physical music and cross-art collaborations. Artists we have heard (and heard from) have worked in interdisciplinary spaces from the broad (music and product design) to the narrow (composition and performance). They have often used a bridge building metaphor to describe how their work connects different disciplines but alternatives have also been proposed, for example working at the centre (as in the centre of a network) rather than simply between disciplines. A variety of reasons for adopting an interdisciplinary practice have been put forward: to empower performers, to reach broader audiences, to explore complex concepts, to renew or extend aesthetic territory. Practice shared within the network has revealed the wide range of skills interdisciplinary work requires, from flexibility in compositional structures and leadership to collaborative and improvisational skills. The importance of skill itself has been debated within the network particularly when applied to multiple disciplines; participants have been rightly wary of mere dilettantism but, on the other hand, the need to acquire expertise across unfamiliar disciplines has been questioned - is it enough simply to understand? As a means of acquiring these skills the artistic 'laboratory' has emerged as vital, providing a space in which, with the right methods, ingrained disciplinary habits may be softened to facilitate productive interaction and exchange. The network has heard from composers working in more curatorial roles, stepping back and worrying less about details, relaxed about authorship. Contributors to the network have shown adventurous attitudes towards their work. Some have been natural interdisciplinarians whose interests carry them to a much broader field of compositional activity, others have been new to the territory and sought partnerships with other disciplines for specific projects or as their practice has evolved. Their urges to escape the confines of their disciplines have been driven by play, curiosity, having a problem to solve, or a dissatisfaction with what they can achieve alone. Finding the right kinds of interaction within teams has played a crucial role in achieving a high degree of innovation. |
| Exploitation Route | The P-I is currently in discussion with Sound and Music about continuing the relationship begun with them during this network. We are looking to develop another network bid that seeks to investigate questions raised during Music Composition as Interdisciplinary Practice, chiefly around the figure of the 'composer' and what this term means in 21st century musical practice. Sound and Music are also interested in looking at the ecology of new music composition in the UK, in particular the rise of artist-led groups and collectives (organisations that featured strongly in MCIP), and creative forms of new music presentation. The P-I's own work will take forward the network findings. He is currently developing a project, in collaboration with colleagues from Surrey and KCL, around composers' creative partnerships. As part of this project he will be working as a composer in an expanded, more curatorial, role that involves programming, arrangement, original composition and 'production' i.e. coordinating textual and audio visual material contributed by other members of the team. Furthermore, members of the team are aiming for an interpenetration of roles to create a more fluid research environment ensuring that insights/findings are presented in a variety of modalities to create the richest possible means of experiencing the research. |
| Sectors | Creative Economy,Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Description | Neil Luck (a member of squib-box and one of the four commissioned network artists) has taken forward the ideas developed in [sweet:ERROR-miku], first heard at the one-day festival that concluded the network's activities, in a new 'city opera' for Aarhus in Denmark as part of their capital of culture programme. The opera uses much of the technology, Vocaloid voice-synthesis software and projected/holographic animated avatars, that was first trialled through the network project. The composer, Liz Johnson, responded to our call for proposals announced though Sound and Music. Although her project was not selected Liz took part in the symposium MCIP ran at York in June 2016 and the project she discussed there, British Isles: Revolutionary Road Test (a participatory installation with choreographer Sarah Rubridge and visual artist Fion Gunn), was born directly out of the network's call for proposals including assembling the multidisciplinary creative team. In 2017 and 2018 Neil Luck (a member of squib-box, see top of this section) has continued to explore practice that springs from ideas fermented in the network. In November of 2017 squib-box collaborated with the NME (New Music Ensemble - another organisation commissioned by the network) employing a production model emerging from the work in the network: they worked in a modular fashion, remotely creating various resources (technological, textual, visual, musical, theatrical) and then combining them in the rehearsal studio in a deliberately 'abrasive' manner. This approach was used again with their 'Beethoven Violin Concerto' project that saw individually prepared, radically contrasting interpretations of this well known work colliding in the rehearsal process. This project premiered in December 2017 at The Dentist, London and was broadcast on BBC Radio 3's 'Hear and Now' on 03.03.18. In 2018 Jamie Hamilton pursued some of the ideas developed in 'You Can See Yourself from the Other Side of the Room' (commissioned by the network) in his new piece '47 Short Texts About America', a trailer for which can be viewed here: https://jamiehamilton.net/47-Short-Texts-About-America. Composer Scott Mc Laughlin (who exhibited the glass sculpture score project 'Reciprocal Structures' at the final one-day festival in 2016 found that his understanding of collaborative projects increased substantially through interaction with the network. The work Scott did on the 'Reciprocal Structures' with glass artists Shelley James fed into his understanding of contingency in complex sound structures which underpinned the creation of several new works including 'In the unknown there is already a script for transcendence'. This work can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW4kE7h-f0A. For Scott's collaborator, Shelley James, the forum and funding from the network were a catalyst for a new dimension to her practice - she subsequently trained as an electrician, taking a professional lighting qualification through the Lighting Industry Association. She is now working with a number of artists and performers to illuminate their work. Shelley is working with a glass studio in Sweden in collaboration with an x-ray crystallographer to explore diffraction patterns through light and sound. Rodrigo Camacho of the NME (New Maker Ensemble) was one of the artists commissioned by the network. Meeting Neil Luck and Jamie Hamilton at the final one-day festival in 2016 proved to be a fruitful contact. These artists worked together again in November 2017 as part of the event 'Under Control' in the Arebyte Gallery on London City Island. Here they explored the intersections between their various practices, exploring a kind of 'happening' aesthetic; a flavour of this can be gleaned from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afVo7ePBdIM and further details can be found here http://www.nmensemble.com/under-control.html. My own work has benefitted from the research undertaken as part of this project. I have recently submitted and AHRC grant proposal (as a Co-I) which relies on a multi-disciplinary output to drive impact. This output involves elements of concert curation and theatrical presentation alongside composition. My compositional practice is broadening considerably in these kinds of ways and aligning more strongly with the concepts underpinning the original project described here. |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural |