Why did I not engage in composition before my research project? What was it like to start composing after having performed contemporary music for many years? What new self-images emerged as I engaged with composition in a digital audio workstation? This is an account of how my artistic identity was negotiated as I composed the 8-channel electroacoustic work Pango (2021–24).
On the other side of notation
When I enrolled as a PhD fellow, I had accumulated several years of experience performing contemporary classical music, in the course of which I had come across a wealth of different kinds of musical notation. I knew how challenging it could be for composers to notate new musical ideas of an experimental character – ideas that had not yet been adopted as part of the musical vocabulary. I had great respect for contemporary composers’ command of extended performance techniques across multiple instrument groups, and for their skill in finding ways of notating these techniques. As a classical performer, my task was to understand and decipher different kinds of notation, sometimes working with the composer to improve it from a performer’s perspective. I knew all too well what performers had to say about poor notation. I had not mastered any notational software program when I enrolled as a research fellow. And learning to use one was a bit daunting in my early attempts at notating sketches of budding solo works. This gave me insight into the challenge composers faced in notating techniques and sounds that fell outside the standard notation for which the software was primarily designed. Despite extensive engagement with notation in my performer’s practice, my concrete skills in notating music were not yet sufficient to communicate what I imagined composing.
Developing new skills of the artistic palette
Composers had often made recordings of me in workshops, which they used as inspiration, or as material for compositions in progress. And I had often recorded myself in the process of studying new works. However, I had never used recordings of myself in a compositional process, to generate new works of my own. When I enrolled as a research fellow, I asked Swedish sound engineer Jonas Backman to teach me how to work in Reaper software. I was keen to explore my sonic palette through recording and audio editing. Further, I felt that working with a digital audio workstation (DAW) might offer a way around the resistance I felt when struggling with notational software. As I started to record myself and experiment with the materials in my DAW, a creative spark was lit. I was thrilled to be able to experiment with the sounds of my own sonic palette, making sound collages with them, combining them in different ways and adding other sounds sources to them. My first experiment, when composing Solastalgia (2022) together with Carola Bauckholt, was called Tour at home and consisted of small modules of sounds I recorded from household items such as toys or kitchenware. Those modules acted as inspiration and practice for our later collaborative work on Solastalgia. With Henrik Strindberg, I recorded improvisations in several layers with performance techniques like circular bow strokes, which I considered to be especially connected to my way of performing. Those improvisations were then used in the process of composing Gradients (2023). For Liza Lim, I recorded myself playing polskas in the Stjärnsund mansion across the yard from where I grew up, with its ticking grandfather clocks and creaking floors. In this way, I was able to share my folk music heritage with her, as well as histories connected to my birthplace. I also created an experimental sound collage based on improvisations from the mansion called Emerentia Dialogues, which later came to act as one of the starting points for Eiksmarka Omland (2024), composed together with Christian Wallumrød.
In January–April 2021, as a part of my PhD studies, I enrolled in a course at Stockholm University of Arts (SKH) targeting sound art and electroacoustic music. During the course, we were introduced to a number of activities related to sound art and audio recording. We soldered tiny synthesizers, made field recordings in the freezing winter landscape and coded in SuperCollider, a platform for audio synthesis and algorithmic composition. Each one of us was further assigned the task of creating a multi-channel work in Reaper. I imagined using my emerging practice of recording myself to create something like a self-portrait with the materials of the sonic palette.
Composing Pango
The result of my coursework at SKH was Pango, composed during the winter of 2021. Thus, my work on Pango unfolded during the pandemic, which carved out an unusually quiet time in my otherwise active life as a performer. Instead of the international trips I was accustomed to undertaking regularly, each day I now instead took a 15-minute walk through the forest to the next suburb. I unpacked my violin in the studio room I rented in a bike repair factory and mounted the microphones. It was a period of experimentation and new thoughts. I had little violin repertoire to study, as concerts were few during lockdown. Instead, I was working on learning how to use the software. As I look back, my new emerging practice offered me an almost physical sensation of growth. New skillabilities were added to my artistic palette on a daily basis. Because of the pandemic, I felt rather detached from my ensemble work, my concert activities and my former practice habits. Despite the isolation, I felt as if I established new connections to people who created music in was different from those I was used to. When I looked in the mirror, I saw an artist who was engaging with music differently than before. I was one of them – one of those people who knew how to direct a condenser mic, who’s fingers knew keyboard shortcuts on the computer for opening the digital mixer desk or who thought of plugins they wanted to add to their library. I was excited that the course I had enrolled in was not located at the Royal College of Music where I used to study, but at SKH. There, I met fellow students who were not necessarily instrumentalists or composers in the classical music tradition. The students at SKH had a different background. They wanted to work as theatre technicians, sound artists or sound engineers.
In my studio, as I pressed ‘record’ in the software, I had few plans for what I wanted to create with the recording. I did not prepare or discard materials that were imperfect. I started exploring some kind of sound or performance technique and slowly kept developing it to see where it would take me. I worked with multiple layers of materials, just as in the work on Solastalgia that unfolded in parallel. The sounds I recorded felt personal to me and came intuitively into my fingers as I picked up my violin. Nevertheless, those sounds were also connected to other works and artists in my world at the time. There were the almost pitchless rapid tremolos that I had been developing when working with composer Joakim Sandgren, there were the rattling paper clips that composer Clara Iannotta used in her string quartet which I had studied, there were traces of the folk music I enjoyed playing and there were influences from my friends in the psychedelic folk-duo Siri Karlsson. Pango was meant as an exercise in the framework of the course at SKH, but sound artist Daniel Karlsson who supervised my work in Reaper, encouraged me to continue developing it into a longer work. In Latin, Pangō means ‘I fasten, fix, set, I set, plant, I compose, make heard or give out’ and in Swahili, a language to which I had developed a special attachment during a yearlong work-stay in Tanzania, pango means ‘cave’. Those two different meanings of the work captured my aim to compose with my inner world of sounds of the sonic palette.
Musical identity and possible selves
What affect did my compositional activities have on the development of my musical identity? What happened as I progressively transformed from being a performer of contemporary classical music to a creative artist? To answer this, I need to explore a bit the concept of musical identity, before outlining some of the personal traits of the musical identity I have carried with me since childhood.
Research on identity in music is a vast field, and a comprehensive mapping of it is outside the scope of this project. However, my thinking is in line with that of researchers Hargreaves, Miell and MacDonald (2002), who outline the ways in which recent technological developments, as well as globalization, in the last decades have given music an increasingly powerful role in the everyday life of more people than at any time in the past. They state that
One result is that music can be used increasingly as a means by which we formulate and express our individual identities. We use it not only to regulate our own everyday moods and behaviours, but also to present ourselves to others in the way we prefer. Our musical tastes and preferences can form an important statement of our values and attitudes, and composers and performers use their music to express their own distinctive views of the world. (Hargreaves et al., 2002, p. 1)
The authors use the concept of identity to look at ‘the widespread and varied interactions between music and the individual’ (Hargreaves et al., 2002, p. 1). Just as I have outlined in the Introduction of this portfolio, the authors view the self as ‘something which is constantly being reconstructed and renegotiated according to the experiences, situations and other people with whom we interact in everyday life’ (Hargreaves, et al., 2002, p. 2). To unpack the discourse on self within social psychology, Hargreaves and colleagues further outline what they call the self-system. The self-system is made up by a number of self-images, they argue, representing the different ways in which we see ourselves. Those self-images are context- or situation-specific. Self-identity is seen as ‘the overall view that we have of ourselves in which these different self-concepts are integrated’ while self-esteem is ‘the evaluative component of the self, and has both cognitive and emotional aspects: how worthy we think, and feel we are’ (Hargreaves et al., 2002, p. 8). Our self-images include aspects of ‘personality style, appearance and the social roles that we play’ (Hargreaves et al., 2002, p. 8). In my case, this could for example be ‘violinist’, ‘contemporary classical specialist’, ‘female performer’ and ‘ensemble member’, but would also capture social roles as ‘mother’, ‘partner’, ‘daughter’ and so forth.
Social constructionist theory suggests that we all have several different identities, rather than a fixed one. Our identities are constructed in our interaction with other people and our surrounding world. ‘In social constructionist terms, identities are also always evolving and shifting – each interaction can lead to new constructions’ (Hargreaves et al., 2002, p. 10). However, the authors point out that, as humans, we carry subjective feelings of something like a core-identity – a sense of self that has a history in us and is relatively stable throughout our lives – rather than being fully aware of our multiple identities. They suggest that this sense of self is created of personal narratives; ‘stories about ourselves that we tell others and indeed ourselves’ (Hargreaves, et al., 2002, p. 10).
How are the different self-images that are integrated in our self-identity developed then? Hargreaves et al. suggest that social comparison is a key to how we construct our self-images.
We constantly compare ourselves with others, so that particular situations and social groups exert a powerful influence on what we do and what we say. We also compare our behaviour with what we expect ourselves to do on the basis of our self-image, which is built up from past experience, and with what we would like to do, i.e. with our ideal self-image. (Hargreaves et al., 2002, p. 8).
Markus & Nurius (1986) introduce the concept of possible selves to complement current conceptions of self-knowledge. ‘Possible selves represent individuals’ ideas of what they might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of becoming, and thus provide a conceptual link between cognition and motivation’ (Markus & Nurius, 1986, p. 954). The concept of possible selves describes how we can develop images of future selves and how those are connected to our personal values, desires and fears.
Possible selves are the cognitive components of hopes, fears, goals, and threats, and they give the specific self-relevant form, meaning, organization, and direction to these dynamics. Possible selves are important, first, because they function as incentives for future behavior (i.e., they are selves to be approached or avoided) and second, because they provide an evaluative and interpretive context for the current view of self. (Markus & Nurius 1986, p. 954).
Just as Hargreaves et al. view the self as socially evolving, reconstructed and renegotiated, Markus & Nurius describe possible selves as depending on social and cultural aspects:
An individual is free to create any variety of possible selves, yet the pool of possible selves derives from the categories made salient by the individual's particular sociocultural and historical context and from the models, images, and symbols provided by the media and by the individual's immediate social experiences. Possible selves thus have the potential to reveal the inventive and constructive nature of the self but they also reflect the extent to which the self is socially determined and constrained. (Markus & Nurius 1986, p. 954).
Thus, as an individual, my repertoire of possible future selves is dependent on a variety of factors. Following Hargreaves et al., my interaction with the music I engage in can further say something about my self-identity. What stories did I tell myself about my creativity as I entered the ‘Transforming with the artistic palette’ project? What kind of self-images did they create? What possible future selves as creative performer and composer did I see for myself?
Developing personal self-images
I grew up in the countryside of Dalarna, Sweden, in Stjärnsund, a small village of 200 inhabitants. Although the work profile of the adults in the village was surprisingly creative, I knew no professional musicians or composers who could serve as role models in music. My parents were academics and classical music lovers, but they did not engage with artistic activities in their professional life. Borthwick & Davidson (2002, p. 76) have studied how ‘children’s musical identities are influenced by a combination of relational factors, connected with how their parents regard them in the role of musician’. My parents took me to violin lessons from the age of five, which means that almost as far back as I have memories, I have seen myself as a violin-playing person. However, given my parent’s professional careers, which were far from that of a freelance violinist specializing in new music, they probably did not imagine that my lessons would lead to a career as a professional musician. Lamont (2002, p. 46) suggests that children’s musical identities develop from this age on, between the ages of 5 and 14 years. She further observes that ‘music clearly does enable children to define themselves in relation to others’ (Lamont, 2002, p. 56). I developed a social identity as a violinist from early on, and as a talented one not long after. One aspect of my early self-image was the social role I played as a violinist. With appreciation from my social network as well as the joy music making offered me, I early on started to imagine a future identity as a professional musician.
In my studies, all the way from elementary school up to the conservatoire education and beyond, I was further identifying as a ‘duktig flicka’ (‘good girl’). I was in many ways a talented and gifted student and I had a capacity to work hard to learn and to accomplish things. I was a very ambitious student who felt uncomfortable making mistakes and failing. I left the high school’s demanding natural science programme with the highest grades possible, while studying classical violin at an advanced level at the same time. As I enrolled at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, I also enrolled at the prestigious School of Architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology. My high demands on myself, both in school and in music performance, brought me joy, but also pressure. My ambition and hard work opened doors to educational and professional possibilities but at the same time I often grappled with a sense of duty and fear of failure.
My childhood and adolescence offered few role models within professional music life other than my violin teachers. I had never met a composer, and certainly not a female one, until I was in my twenties. The classical composers I knew about were almost without exception dead, white men from other parts of Europe. Given this complete lack of representation, it is not surprising that I never considered composition to be a possible future career path. As I discuss in the Introduction to this portfolio, my classical education in the conservatoire system was primarily focused on performance of the canonized classical repertoire. Neither composition nor improvisation were substantially included in the curriculum without designing a special path to include them. I carried a tradition of folk music with me since my childhood that to some extent involved creative activities bordering composition, but I saw this as quite separate from the classical music I studied. During my studies at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, I was fortunate to have violin tutors who, pioneers of modern repertoire themselves, were very open and encouraging toward my explorations of contemporary music. However, performing contemporary music was not the same as composing it. I never composed during my seven years of study or during the following 10 years that I worked as a professional performer. Why?
Susan O’Neill has researched the self-identity of young musicians. She writes that
once a young person has taken up a position within a discourse, such as ‘I’m not really a musician’, he or she inevitably will come to experience the world and his or her self from that perspective. This restricts the concepts, images, metaphors, ways of speaking, self-narratives and so on that are available and used in constructing a sense of self-identity in relation to music. It also entails an emotional commitment to the categories of musician and non-musician; young people are allocated to and see themselves as belonging to these categories. Young musicians’ constructions of who they are and therefore what is possible or appropriate, and wrong or inappropriate forms of musical engagement, all derive from the ideology of lived experience. (O’Neill, 2002, p. 94)
The way that the young position themselves as ‘being a musician’ or not can further be applied to how performer students regard themselves as ‘being a composer’ or not. The emotional commitment of being socially educated into a role constructs a self-identity that is repeatedly being reinforced by the way we view the world.
Good girl, good performer?
Training to become a professional classical violinist specialized in contemporary music requires time, dedication and effort. One could argue that such a path simply doesn’t allow the time to dive into compositional activities. This may, indeed, be one of the many reasons I did not engage in composition during my studies. I was just too busy, with practising the violin repertoire consuming most of my time. However, I also see additional reasons for the absence of compositional activities in my practice. In my Introduction to this project, I have given my perspective on how Lydia Goehr’s concept of Werktreue regulates the creative space of the classical performer that I studied to become. In the light of composing Pango, as well as in the collaborative creative work in the other case studies, I have explored how fidelity to the work and composer is rooted in my performer’s role. I have further come to understand how my personality, gender, upbringing and education affect the stories I tell myself about my creative abilities.
Historian and musicologist Suzanne Cusick has advocated for feminist and queer perspectives and approaches in the field of musicology. In becoming a feminist, the intellectual ritual of self-identification is key, she writes. ‘Each of us speaks for sure only for herself, each of us from a unique situation born of multiple identities layered each on the other – class, race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religious beliefs and so on’ (1994, p. 8). I have developed multiple identities in a personal combination: I am an ambitious duktig flicka with a fear of failing and, therefore, of taking risks. With few early creative role models, I had a performer’s education that emphasized loyalty toward the musical work. Additionally, I have developed an interest, taste and love for music and experienced a professional life where I have been challenging and developing myself through the performance of it. I have become a skilled, specialized and ambitious performer, acting within a rather narrow creative space that I seldom challenged.
Can the fact that I have not engaged in composition be connected to my role as a ‘duktig flicka’, and thus of being gendered as female? Further, is there a parallel to the role of the faithful performer? As I was working on this text, I one day spoke to a friend and fellow string player about combining the activities of composition and performance of classical music. She told me she regretted deeply that she did not study composition along with performance, since it had always been her dream to become a composer. Without much reflection, I asked her if the fact that she did not pursue her dreams at an early stage in her studies was because she was a woman. She said that yes, she thought it was a part of the issue. She always felt that she needed to master her instrument ‘perfectly’ before she could study something like composition. It was somehow part of her ‘duty’ as a performer.
I recognize her reasoning in the ideas of the young Karin. Being a young duktig flicka in my adolescence, I grew up to be a diligent and conscientious professional woman. As such, I have internalized several of the personality traits of a duktig flicka. Those personality traits are a part of who I am, and, in many ways, I take pride and pleasure in them. In a generalized view, a duktig flicka first works – then she can play. She fulfils her duties before she cultivates pleasure-led activities that does not generate results. This view is connected to the efficiency mindset that I experienced and outlined in the case study on Eiksmarka Omland (Wallumrød & Hellqvist 2024). Connected to the classical performer’s role, aimed at mastery and accomplishment, the efficiency mindset wants to see concrete results. This mindset thus carries an inherent restriction to creative activities as composition and improvisation. Those activities thrive on processes of searching and uncertain outcome. As it turned out, mastering my instrument is indeed a life-long journey, and time for activities such as composition and improvisation will not arise unless I create it. Composition further involves an inherent element of risk; new things are created that may or may not be rated as successful by others. I did not feel confident enough to take that risk. In the initial draft of my artistic research project description, I included no compositional activities of my own. I was unable to imagine such a possible future self. However, encouraged by readers of my draft, I hesitantly added that I would engage in composition. This was much more than a change to the project: by saying I would engage in composition I had taken a step toward a practice-led questioning of my self-image as a musician who does not compose. Cusick writes that ‘gender is a system of power relationships that is designed to give men and women different experiences of life’ (Cusick, 1994, p. 10). Just as our experiences of life depend on gender, I see the experience of creative leeway as different depending on whether I am socialized into the classical performer’s role or that of a composer. Certainly, a classical composer’s role also carries restrictions, and I may discover these as I do more composing. I had experienced how the identity-layers of gender and the professional role of the faithful performer both came with certain expectations and limitations that together reinforced restrictions around my creativity. Those identity-layers were at times difficult to separate in my experience of the world, and they were thus connected to each other in my personal self-images.
My current solo repertoire is made up equally of works written by male and female composers. But this has not always been the case. In my early career, I knew considerably fewer female composers than male and a great deal of the ‘contemporary classics’ for violin were composed by male composers. However, gradually, a shift has taken place in my artistic context. Today, there’s no effort in creating a gender balanced concert programme. I have longstanding collaborations with female composers and the contemporary violin repertoire is buzzing with new works by composers like Clara Iannotta, Malin Bång, Kristine Tjøgersen, Jenny Hettne, Madeleine Isaksson, Natasha Barrett, Liza Lim and Carola Bauckholt.
The artistic palette and composition
During the phase of the project when Pango was composed, I had not yet fully developed the concept of the artistic palette out of the earlier sonic palette. The artistic palette had not yet taken shape as a multidimensional concept. However, in retrospect, I see how my evolving practice at this time expanded the skillabilities in the different dimensions of the artistic palette. I practiced the skillabilities of tuning into the sounds of the sonic palette. I knew those sounds were in different ways connected to me, and I wanted to explore them further and combine them with each other in new ways. I was curious to explore how those sounds acted in several layers in a composition, differently from how I was used to hearing them one at a time as I played them. Further, I was curious to see how differently they would come across when I was the one combining them compared to when others had been using them in compositional work. Composing a self-portrait was an inward-gazing practice that posed questions about what embodied knowledge could be in my body and practice. Composing on my own, rather than working collaboratively with others, also posed questions about how musical materials were developed and where they came from. I contemplated the cyclical aspect of the musical materials I worked with, how they were constantly being used, developed, reshaped by different artists. Like branches of a tree, materials with shared origins could come to take different shapes in different practices. There was also the contextual dimension, active through the practical course work at SKH, the surrounding artistic materials and my engagement with the technology. This dimension expanded in concrete ways as my work embraced the context of electroacoustic music. The relational dimension also expanded, with skills in the area of connecting to other artists. I developed skillabilities that situated me in a new social context as I developed a new professional role. I established connections to the other student-artists at SKH, expanding my artistic context and network with their practices. The intuitive dimension was further active through my compositional activities. I regularly practised the ability to tune in to my taste and preferences. I reflected around my motivation to compose and create. I continued, at times, to find it difficult to view myself as a composer; but I developed strategies for living with that doubt. Most importantly, by engaging in all those different activities, I developed the ability to imagine new future possible selves and to negotiate my established self-images.
Developing agency
Along with the growth generated from those different activities, there has also been friction and challenge in the transformative processes of evolving identities. Having regarded myself as a non-composing person for most of my life, when sitting down in my studio to create a composition, new questions arose. A new door had opened to a void that waited for me to start filling it. Where would I start? What if it turns out to be a bad piece? What if I am just not meant to compose? I wonder what x, y and z will think of this? Will they think that it is embarrassing that I try to compose? Who would listen to this anyway? Do I have anything to say? Underlying all of these questions is the simple but pervasive doubt that I was a creative person. I lacked trust in my creative abilities and doubted whether I was ‘allowed’ to fill the new space by exploring my creativity. Even though I believed that every individual is creative and deserving of the agency to develop their creativity, when it came to myself, I had to work hard to start negotiating my regulating self-images. Connecting to my personal taste and preferences needed training. This ability emerged progressively through the creative processes, in the making, doing, trying, and reflecting of the musicmaking. When starting to arrange sonic elements in a timeline in my software, the evaluative aspects of composition became inevitable. Was this a good transition? Was this material developed enough? Should I shift the different sections? My first reaction would sometimes be a blank. What was better? How would I know? Then, by continuing to ask those questions and connecting to the intuitive dimension of the artistic palette, some answers would eventually appear. I did have preferences, just as I had when it came to performance. I was just not used to listening to them.
I do regard myself as a performer with agency, power, conscious aesthetic preferences and a broad repertoire of possible selves when it comes to the activities of performance in my practice. As a performer, I dare say that today I feel empowered and confident in my work most of the time. In my practice, I keep creating experiences where I challenge myself and grow by doing so. However, the self-images of the performing and composing Karin was at the start of this research trajectory very different. I did not sense any of the agency I knew I carry as a performer when it came to composition. I was held back by a lack of experience, a limited repertoire of future possible selves and a fear of failing. However, by gaining hands-on experience through collaborative and sole composition, by repeatedly challenging myself to create, by failing and succeeding, I have extended my possible future selves. Through those activities, agency has gradually developed.
As a mother of three young daughters, in my everyday life during the research project, I have also regularly been thinking about what views of myself as a creative person I want to model for them. I want them to grow up with unrestricted views of how creative they are. I want their possible future selves to evolve with a sense of curiosity, exploration and by following their personal taste and interests. Negotiating my own self-images and starting to question regulative aspects of them has been a way to start.
Negotiating self-images through composition and improvisation
Hargreaves et al. (2002, p. 10) write that ‘music is a fundamental channel of communication, and we argue that it can act as a medium through which people can construct new identities and shift existing ones’. Given the suggested identity-constructing potential of music making and listening, how are my different self-images negotiated by engaging with composition?
By learning the new skills of how to use a DAW, I have expanded my artistic palette. I have learnt the basics of recording, what equipment I need and why, how I edit the recorded materials, how to structure them and communicate them to others. I have used those skills in creative work with others and in each of the case studies the agency developed through my engagement with the technology has played an important role. Outside of my research project, I have also been able to contribute to the work of artists in other genres by independently recording materials for their different albums and projects. By receiving an audio file from another artist, I could record materials and send back to them as a way of engaging with their music despite the pandemic. Through this kind of work, I have come to see myself as someone who knows how to work with audio technology. A new self-image and social role have emerged. Further, as I perform contemporary classical repertoire with electronics, I now know more of the mechanisms behind tape parts, pedals, software or patches. This knowledge has empowered me when, for example, performing my repertoire at occasions with sound engineers I do not know. All of this has shifted my view of myself into a more knowledgeable artist and an empowered new self-image has been constructed.
Sometimes the negotiation of self-image during the fellowship period has hit me out of the blue. One such example was when I was contacted by an album producer in April 2019, half a year after enrolling as a PhD fellow. The producer wondered whether I could contribute to an upcoming single by a Swedish rock artist. There was no sheet music, the identity of the artist was a secret, and I would hear the song first time when I arrived at the studio. I was about to turn the job down owing to my insecurity about both the conditions and my own creative ability. I would not be able to prepare and would have to improvise on the spot to something I was hearing for the first time. I was not at all used to working in that way, and I could imagine plenty of ways I could fail at this. However, as it was a friend who had recommended me, I said yes, but playing myself down enough to say that if it was a disaster the producer did not have to pay me. The recording session turned out to be the upcoming single of one of Sweden’s most famous rock artists, Ulf Lundell. Together with the guidance of the producer, I played a few takes of the tune, improvising and searching for melodies that could fit to the rest of the instruments that were already recorded. I was surprised by how fun it actually was and by how the violin came to take on such a lead role in the tune, Tranorna kommer (Lundell 2019).
A few days later, I was contacted by Lundell himself. He was very excited about how the song turned out and asked me to join his band on tour for most of the summer. I was perplexed, and once again I had to say that I could not really do such things. I was not that kind of musician. Improvising in rock settings was not in any way incorporated in my self-image. In Lundell’s band, there was no sheet music, there was a different programme on each of the 15 concerts, and there had never been a string player in the band before who might have served me as inspiration. I would have to invent something new on each tune, and sometimes on the spot in front of an audience of thousands. Additionally, I would be 8–9 months pregnant during most of the tour. However, finally I said yes. The following experience of walking straight into a new genre and role, like composing Pango, was a sensation of growth so profound as I felt that I could feel the new neural pathways being created in my brain. Suddenly, there I was, on stage in front of thousands of people each night, improvising and using a pedal board with effects. It turned out that despite all my imagined possibilities for failure, I loved being there. And I was good at it. My folk music background, my classical education and my new music specialization was the perfect cocktail to match the rock sound. I had desperately been clinging to ideas of what I could not do without even trying to test these assumptions. As the audience one night screamed ‘Karin! Karin!’ in appreciation, I had to laugh at how I had restricted myself beforehand, assuming what I could or could not do. Through the experience of engaging in this new kind of music making, a new self-image gradually started replacing the old one I had created for myself. This experience made me recognize that there were previously untapped resources of tacit embodied knowledge within me, waiting to be use. I learnt how the artistic palette not only consisted of new skillabilities that I developed. There were also forms of knowledge and creativity that I carried with me that I had not yet explored due to their tacit nature and my lack of agency. Through situations like my sudden encounter with rock music, those tacit, creative skillabilities could be unleashed.
My artistic identity in transformation
To ‘compose’ is to form something new by putting different elements together. Through the ‘Transforming with the artistic palette’ project, I have gradually come to think of ‘composition’ as potentially comprising a range of activities beyond that of composing actual musical works. I have challenged my view of the classical composer by learning that there is no specific ‘composer identity’ needed in order to be a composer. Composition is something I do, not something I am. Seen in this way, in my performance practice previous to the ‘Transforming with the artistic palette’ project, I have always been composing with different aesthetic elements. I have composed different artistic projects, developed a solo repertoire through adding selected works to it, carefully decided repertoire for solo programs, imagined creative frameworks for concerts, put together websites and so on. Strikingly though, I have not engaged in composition with musical elements becoming musical works.
However, through my research, I have actively started to engage in composition of musical works collaboratively and alone. By doing so, I have challenged my own idea of what a composer is and can be. I have explored my own prejudices of who a composing person can be. In this process of negotiation, skillabilities that I embody as a classical musician have become tangible, such as using my embodied knowledge and my taste. I have understood how some skillabilities connected to composition are new to me and therefore need to be developed by engaging with them. Other skillabilities are tacit, intuitive and embodied and have been accessed in certain situations when the boundaries of my role are challenged.
One could perhaps say that my explorations of the multidimensional artistic palette have had a de-specialised effect on me. I have expanded my role from being a performer with a relatively narrow creativity niche to that of an artist and researcher with a broader set of activities that I engage in. New colours have been added to, or discovered within the artistic palette, as composition, improvisation, text writing, working with audio technology and collaborating. In many ways, this new role that has been developed carries similarities to musician’s practices prior to the 1800s. In a holistic way, musicians before Werktreue engaged freely with composition and improvisation, bringing their creativity into the music they played. In my present-day practice, I am not alone in my (re)creation of a holistic musician’s role and developing new skillabilities of my artistic palette. In my artistic context, I see several classical performers engaging as composers, curators and improvisers. Examples are pianist and curator Heloisa Amaral, cellist and composer Tanja Orning, violinist and composer Winnie Huang, composer-performer-media artist Jessie Marino and clarinettist and composer Kristine Tjøgersen.
Having opened the door to composition through the work on Pango as well as the other works in this project, what does the future bring after my fellowship? I am interested in composition in a wide sense; the act of putting elements together into new entities, not restricted to classical music composition only. I am curious to explore new ways of creating music, beyond the dichotomies of performer and composer. Thus, I am inspired to continuing pursuing collaborative compositional activities; continuing exploring the blurring of borders between practices that the collaborative work in this project has created. Further, I am curious to see whether there are other creative doors to open that have remained closed for some reason. What other embodied resources and new forms for creativity will revealed in the future?
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Pango was presented at Stockholm University of Arts in April 2021, at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, November 2021 and at Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival in September 2024.
