Intentional Listening
(2018)
author(s): Rachel Mills
published in: KC Research Portal
Name: Rachel Mills
Main
Subject: Classical Cello
Research
Supervisor: Stefan Petrovic
Title of Research: Intentional Listening
Research Question:
How does listening to recordings while learning a piece affect one’s artistic interpretation?
Summary of
Results:
Since beginning my masters, I have been intrigued with the concept of finding personal interpretations for the pieces I play. However, I found that when confronted with a standard take on a piece, I would doubt the legitimacy and usefulness of my own ideas. As a result, my research aimed to discover ways for myself and other studying musicians to find individuality in their music. Because the ease of access to recordings is such an important influence for musicians, this research focuses on how students can refer to recordings without allowing them to override personal creativity.
The resulting research emphasizes the importance of intention, both in consulting recordings and in creating takes that one believes in. I have identified five ways to use recordings to help one determine a reason for consulting them. In addition, I have discovered a process of recording myself and intentionally listening to these recordings with a focus on my interpretation’s effectiveness. It is my hope that these processes will also work as a suggestion for other advance music students working towards discovering their artistic identity.
Biography:
Rachel Mills is pursuing a master degree at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague where she studies with Jan Ype Nota and Michel Strauss. A native of New York State, she received her bachelors from Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio under Amir Eldan. While at Oberlin, Mills performed both as a soloist and with her quartet on multiple honors recitals and collaborated on recording projects with the Contemporary Music Ensemble, Oberlin Orchestra, and Sinfoniette. She has frequently sat principle cellist in student ensembles, including the New York State All-State Orchestra and on the Oberlin Orchestra’s most recent tour to Chicago’s Symphony Center. Mills has also participated in advanced and fellowship chamber music programs across the United States. In addition to her studies, Mills is passionate about finding ways to inspire young people to engage with classical music. In doing so, she thrice traveled to Panama to teach and perform in connection with the National Music Association there.
Romanticizing Brahms: Early Recordings and the [De]Construction of Brahmsian Identity
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Anna Scott
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Despite most pianists' claims of historical deference and creative agency, their performances of Brahms's piano works are nothing like the early-recorded performances of the composer and his students: gaps that are mediated by understandings of Brahms's Classical canonic identity, the performance norms that protect that identity, and those norms' underlying aesthetic ideology of control. This predication of Brahmsian identity on restraint leaves the composer and his students in a precarious situation, as their recordings evidence an approach that is governed by the inhibitions typically associated with Romanticism. This volume, by Anna Scott, seeks to problematize understandings of Brahms's identity: by investigating the origins and vestiges of the aesthetic ideology of control; by analysing and copying the recordings of pianists in the composer's inner circle; and by applying these pianists' styles in ways that are just as disruptive to modern notions of Brahmsian identity as their early-recorded models. In so doing, a thoroughly Romantic performance style emerges that catalyses a fundamental shift in understanding as related to Brahms's identity; thereby opening up a new palette of expressive and technical resources, and both elucidating and narrowing persistent gaps between modern and early-recorded Brahms style, as well as between what performers believe, know, and ultimately do.
A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF THE SONOLOGY ELECTROACOUSTIC ENSEMBLE
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Richard Barrett
connected to: KC Research Portal
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This is a report on research supported by the lectorate ‘Music, Education and Society’, research group ‘Making in Music’, at the Royal Conservatoire, The Hague. The present text and the accompanying audio component constitute a documentation of just over one year’s activity by the Sonology Electroacoustic Ensemble, an improvising group I set up in 2009 in which I perform together with Conservatoire students, ex-students, faculty members and guests. A primary purpose of the research has been to address the question of how this activity might inform a more general approach to free improvisation in the context of this conservatoire and others, especially where combinations of electronic and acoustic instruments are featured, and how this might inform the learning trajectories of students of instrumental playing, composition, electronic music and other areas. This question is addressed principally through reflections on the workshops and performances undertaken with the ensemble between October 2018 and December 2019, which amount to around four hours of recorded material.