Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
![Academy of Creative and Performing Arts](https://media.researchcatalogue.net/rc/cache/0c/33/19/87/0c331987ef31f53a68c102d63113afad.png?t=97b632dbab00628ad16580aa749a8107&e=1725240300)
About this portal
The portal is used for the presentation of dissertations, papers, essays, artistic work, and work-in-progress of the ACPA PhD candidates. Furthermore, it is used by supervisors and other coaches to insert comments on the work of these candidates.
contact person(s):
Marcel Cobussen ![](/rc/images/email.gif)
,
Gabriel Paiuk ![](/rc/images/email.gif)
url:
http://www.hum.leiden.edu/creative-performing-arts/
Recent Activities
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Finding Focus
(2019)
author(s): Susan Williams
published in: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
An important question facing musicians both in the practice room and on stage is “What should I focus on?” There is a great deal of research in the fields of movement sciences and sports that suggests that adopting an external focus of attention – focusing on the intended effects of one’s movements – can be beneficial both for learning and for performance of complex motor skills. There has been very little research done on the effects of external focus on musicians.
The aims of this study on external focus were as follows: to translate the idea of external focus from movement science into the field of music (how can external focus be characterized for music-making?); to design several ways to use, test and explore the application of external focus in field situations; and to collect data and find information to elucidate the effects of external focus and the instances in which it can work for musicians.
A series of three empirical projects were designed and carried out in both semi-controlled as well as natural environments. The mixed methods research approach included both quantitative and qualitative elements. A music-pedagogical practice tool based on external focus was designed and used in all three projects.
The first project involved natural trumpet players (n=7) who practiced fragments of repertoire using an external focus practice tool. Results were compared the their ‘usual’ practice methods. Quantitative data was collected to show the effects of external focus on accuracy, self-efficacy, confidence and motivation of the players. In the second project the same seven players participated in the preparation and performance of a chamber music concert for trumpet consort. The third project involved a chamber ensemble of 18 players including string players, trumpeters and keyboard players. In projects two and three the performances were prepared and rehearsed by using tools and techniques based on external focus. Qualitative data was collected from questionnaires, surveys and interviews.
Results from the three projects tentatively supported the overall hypothesis: External focus is beneficial to musicians’ learning and performance experience. Statistical results showed positive effects of external focus on accuracy and suggest a positive trend for confidence and for self-efficacy in performance. Qualitative data from interviews and surveys over the three interventions showed the performers’ ensemble playing was enhanced by using an external focus approach, and that they suffered much less from performance anxiety than usual.
External focus could play a larger role in music pedagogy for musicians at every level and stage of learning. The kind of procedural implicit learning that results from using tools based on external focus means that technique (motor control) is being informed by musical intention and not the other way around.
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In Search of the Public: Exploring Contemporary Performance Practices of Classical Music in the Netherlands
(2019)
author(s): Julia Friederike Pank
published in: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
Classical music performance is widely associated with grand concert halls and an elitist audience and has increasingly been critiqued for not maintaining contact with the wider public. Some even speak of a “crisis of classical music,” (Freeman 2014; Behrman 2009; Lurvink 2006) as it becomes more challenging to raise sufficient funds, and, due to declining subsidies, to sustain a visiting public. Recently, the art sector (not only) in the Netherlands has gathered its energies for profound restructuring and change. Difficult conditions contrast with the still widely held image of the Netherlands as a thriving innovative environment for the arts, known for its bustling ensemble culture of around 1000 diverse groups ranging from small chamber music ensembles to symphony orchestras (beroepkunstenaar.nl; Cobussen 2000). Is live classical music no longer relevant in a fast-paced, technologically oriented contemporary society? What and who determines its relevance? And which strategies do musicians generate in order to counter such unfavorable developments? In this research project, drawing upon several academic and artistic methods, a number of case studies, constituting potential alternatives to the traditional concert practice, has been investigated. These include bringing music to new and transformed locations, increasing audience participation, or turning the performance into a multi-sensorial experience. What implications do such practices have for the audience-performer relationship? And how do alternative performance practices affect our understanding of “classical music”? This article can be seen as a “brief history of what is now changing” (Gumbrecht 2004: 21) in the world of classical music in the Netherlands, focusing on specific examples that attempt to innovate the sector, thereby giving some insight as to its strengths and weaknesses.
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Beyond Borders. Broadening the Artistic Palette of (Composing) Improvisers in Jazz.
(2017)
author(s): Dick de Graaf
published in: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
In this on-line dissertation, jazz saxophonist Dick de Graaf investigates a variety of compositional and improvisational models and techniques in contemporary jazz and Western art music, and discusses possible applications of these materials in current jazz practices. The study includes examinations of educational publications by five selected jazz artists (Dave Liebman, Jerry Bergonzi, George Garzone, Walt Weiskopf, and John O’Gallagher), and the analysis of compositional techniques by two composers of the 20th century: Peter Schat's Tone Clock and Olivier Messiaen's modes of limited transposition. In addition, these theories and techniques are illustrated by selected examples (transcriptions and audio excerpts) and by examples of applications by various musicians, including the author. All examples are thoroughly analyzed and evaluated in order to determine their potential use in contemporary jazz practices.
The research results provide comprehensive insights into compositional and improvisational processes in jazz, and offer materials that can be useful for the personal artistic development of jazz practitioners, including musicians, composers, and educators.
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Tactile Paths: on and through Notation for Improvisers
(2017)
author(s): Christopher Williams
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
published in: Research Catalogue
Tactile Paths is a native digital, media-rich PhD dissertation. It aims to articulate and expand the nexus of notation and improvisation in contemporary and experimental music. The project interweaves direct artistic experience with insights from improvisation studies, the social sciences, philosophy, and various scholarship in the arts to reveal methodological connections among diverse artists such as Richard Barrett, Cornelius Cardew, Malcolm Goldstein, Lawrence Halprin, Bob Ostertag, Ben Patterson, and the author. By focusing on how notation is used, rather than on what it represents in an abstract sense, the author shows how written scores emerge from and feed back into ongoing improvisational processes. Thus, it is argued, they are not fixed texts whose primary purpose is to prescribe and preserve, but rather tactile paths in the improviser’s ever-crescent musical and social environment. This practice-based approach aims to lay the conceptual groundwork for theorizing and broadening the creative relevance of work whose importance to practitioners belies its marginal presence in academia and institutions.
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Multiple Paths: Towards a Performance Practice in Computer Music
(2015)
author(s): Juan Parra
published in: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This research project proposes multiple paths towards the development of a performance practice in computer music. It starts with the author’s transition from traditional instrumentalist to electronic musician, assessing the roles of composer, performer and instrument builder as integrated in computer music practice. Three of the case studies presented in this thesis suggest approaches to understand the notion of interpretation with electronic instruments, introducing the methods of reconstruction, reinterpretation and re-appropriation as applied to the performance of music by Cage, Feldman and Nono. The remaining five case studies deal with the author’s own creations, developed on the basis of concepts such as mapping, sonification, historical contextualisation and spatialisation, and informed by the multithreaded role of the computer music practitioner. The situation of the performer of electronic instruments in relation to traditional instrumentalists is a topic of consideration throughout this thesis, informing the final conclusions as well as refuelling the questioning for future work.
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Thesis information (in Dutch):
Proefschrift
ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof. mr. C.J.J.M. Stolker, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties
te verdedigen op dinsdag 2 december 2014 klokke 16.15 uur
door
Juan Parra Cancino
geboren te Osorno (CL)
in 1979
Promotiecommissie
Prof. Frans de Ruiter 1e promotor
Prof. Richard Barrett 2e promotor
Dr. Marcel Cobussen co-promotor
Prof. Clarence Barlow
Prof. Dr. Nicolas Collins School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Prof. Dr. Simon Emmerson Leicester Media School, De Montfort University
Dr. Vincent Meelberg
Prof. Dr. Larry Polansky University of California, Santa Cruz
Dit proefschrift is geschreven als een gedeeltelijke vervulling van de vereisten voor het doctoraatsprogramma docARTES. De overblijvende vereiste bestaat uit een demonstratie van de onderzoeksresultaten in de vorm van een artistieke presentatie. Het docARTES programma is georganiseerd door het Orpheus Instituut te Gent. In samenwerking met de Universiteit Leiden, de Hogeschool der Kunsten Den Haag, het Conservatorium van Amsterdam, de Katholieke Universiteit Leuven en het Lemmensinstituut.
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Moving early music: Improvisation and the work-concept in seventeenth-century French keyboard performance
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Mark Edwards
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
At present, historically-informed performance (HIP) functions simultaneously as an established musical tradition and as a method for artistic inquiry and renewal. HIP’s capacity to effect change within artistic practice is, however, constrained by its own doxa. This study of Mark Edwards therefore asks the question: what kinds of new practices might have once been, and might still become possible without the influence of the work-concept? Using the keyboard music of Jacques Champion de Chambonnières as its central case study, this dissertation proposes understanding a piece’s fluid range of identities using the concept of mouvance, conceived as a kind of variance that arises within performances and is acknowledged by cultural participants (audiences and performers). Moreover, this study attempts to re-create this practice of mouvance by also re-creating the improvisational practice upon which mouvance relied. To that end, it adapts and extends existing research on historical improvisation (particularly studies of partimento) using techniques from computational musicology. It puts forward an “inductive” approach to style re-creation and improvisation pedagogy in which techniques and procedures are extrapolated from highly specific repertoires. Through mouvance, this study thus offers a new and historically-informed approach for applying the insight gained through improvisational practice to the creative performance of historical repertoires.