In May 2015, during a ‘lute afternoon’ organized by the Belgian Lute Academy, I had the chance to interview Ariane Renel, a musicologist and lute player. Because my research seeks to explore understandings of current early music practice, I inquired about the ways she made sense of this musical culture, the approaches she thought informed her practice the most. In describing her lute practice, she emphasized how, when playing with period instruments, one has to adapt to them and be perceptive to how they react to embodied actions:
When you play on period instruments such as the lute, you have to adapt to the instrument so to speak. It’s not like a nice modern piano in which you press a key and then ‘clack’ you have an automatically clear sound. With the lute you really have to try as the instrument is very ungrateful, you have to try and see how the instrument reacts, what it can give you… and then you have to be at its service and realise ‘ok, this it can do, and this it cannot do’. It’s a very tactile approach actually… You do not play with the sound that you want to have in mind, you play while trying to feel how your instrument reacts to what you ask from it, you see? And this is due to its construction… it’s a very light instrument (…) and therefore you have to go find your sounds in its fineness… (Ariane Renel, 2015).
Because my research seeks to explore the culture of early music by looking at the different ways its members understand it, what follows is a characterization of Ariane Renel’s practice. Historian of science John Pickstone (2001) characterizes different ‘ways of knowing’ the world, each one characteristic of, but not exclusive to, a particular historical period. One example is experimentalism, which is originally characteristic of the natural sciences and finds its beginnings in the nineteenth century. This way of knowing centers on a few elements that serve to deconstruct a certain area of study and consequently analyse its different objects as ‘compounds’ (p. 239). The activity of focusing on one element of her performance, namely the materiality of the instrument, as a basis for research I argue, can be associated with ‘experimentalism’. To these ways of knowing the world correspond ‘ways of working’ in the world (Pickstone, 2011).
Experimentalism is strongly related to processes of re-describing, reclassifying or refining technical processes; and ultimately re-assembling the different re-worked elements in innovative reconstructions. Ariane Renel’s approach of delving into the instrument’s materiality, experimenting with affordances and consequently producing an unpredictable way of performing can be typified as this way of working. Here, the lute can be seen both as “a musical instrument and as an experimental setting for acquiring knowledge” about early music performance (Bijsterveld & Peters, 2010, p. 118).
In my research, I argue that an innovative dimension permeates contemporary practices of early music. As illustrated, Ariane Renel’s particular way of researching early music creates an experimental setting of which modifications in her practice come out. Her explicit acknowledgement of producing unpredictable sounds in her practice suggests a dynamic of transformation occurring in the culture, calling for a rethinking of its very definition, meaning and significance.
References
- Interview with Ariane Renel, May 10, 2015, Muziekacademie Wilrijk, Edegem.
- Bijsterveld, K., & Peters, P. F. (2010). Composing Claims on Musical Instrument Development: A Science and Technology Studies' Contribution. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 35(2), 106-121.
- Pickstone, J. V. (2001). Ways of Knowing: A New History of Science, Technology, and Medicine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Pickstone, J. V. (2011). A Brief Introduction to Ways of Knowing and Ways of Working. History of Science, 49(3), 235-245.
