Artistic results


The artistic results the project includes are five co-created musical works and one composition of my own:


  • Carola Bauckholt and Karin Hellqvist: Solastalgia for violin and electronics with a video by Eric Lanz ad libitum (2020–2023)


  • Karin Hellqvist and Henrik Strindberg: Gradients (2023) for solo violin


  • Liza Lim, with Karin Hellqvist: One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) (2021–2022) for violin with low octave string


  • Christian Wallumrød and Karin Hellqvist: Eiksmarka Psalm (2024) for violin and tape 


  • Karin Hellqvist: Pango, electroacoustic work (2021–2024)

     

  • Manos Tsangaris and Karin Hellqvist: Chain of Triggers, publication (2024)



The artistic results were presented in a concert during Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, on 19 September 2024 in Kulturkirken Jakob. The PhD portfolio was created prior to the concert.


The album Palette recorded by LAWO Classics act as additional documentation of all of the works except Chain of Triggers. Palette was released on 19 September 2024.  The album can be listened to in this portfolio in the pages of the respective case studies or by scanning the QR code below.  

 

Additional published work discussing the shared work in the project, not included in the reflection:


  • Essay on Liza Lim’s One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin):  K. Hellqvist (2022c). Heartbeats at the knot of presence. Portable Gray, 5(1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/720493


  • Peer-reviewed article of the collaborative work on Solastalgia: K. Hellqvist (2022). Solastalgia: Layers of caring. Ruukku – Studies in Artistic Research, 18. https://doi.org/10.22501/ruu.1369344


  • K. Hellqvist (2021). Solastalgia – mourning through the translation of ice, Antarktikos Magazine, 2021(1), 52–54.

Introduction



It is personal, poetic, dynamic and emerging. It is multidimensional and connected to the artwork. It is alive with imaginative and evaluative artistic processes. It is connected to my body. It holds my artistic skills and abilities. It empowers me. I use it in creative work, and my engagement with it gives life to sonic materials. It evolves in collaborative activities. My artistic palette is guiding me on my transformative journey.


       

            ‘Transforming with the Artistic Palette’ is my PhD project in artistic research, carried out at the Norwegian Academy of Music in the years 2018–2024. This project has been a practice-led exploration of performer creativity and collaborative work. By imagining and conceptualizing the artistic palette and using it in shared work with five composer-artists and in own composition, I have expanded my creativity as a performer of contemporary classical music. I have explored the artistic palette as a multidimensional concept, comprising embodied, contextual, relational and intuitive dimensions. Through the artistic work undertaken, my role as performer has gradually become increasingly creative. The research project has been a stretched-out liminal space between a practice I perceived as too narrow for my own growth and one of unlimited creative possibilities.

 


This portfolio constitutes the reflection and documentation of the artistic processes that this project has comprised. In this introduction to the portfolio, I pose a number of questions about the concept of the artistic palette, and about my creativity as a performer and collaborative work. The introduction further includes information about my research: the background, context, theory, research questions and methodology. The portfolio is a compilation of six case studies – which make up the artistic results of the project – bookended with this introduction and a closing discussion that outlines my research findings. Five of the case studies are instances of collaborative work on solo violin pieces; the sixth is work on my own composition. The case studies / artistic results of the project are the musical works Gradients (Karin Hellqvist, Henrik Strindberg), Solastalgia (Carola Bauckholt, Karin Hellqvist), One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) (Liza Lim, with Karin Hellqvist), Eiksmarka Omland (Christian Wallumrød, Karin Hellqvist), Chain of Triggers (Manos Tsangaris, Karin Hellqvist) and Pango (Karin Hellqvist). Further case studies are found in four reflections in text or sound that are already published in established journals for artistic research. Following the introduction to the portfolio, a path through the case studies is suggested. The artistic results of the project were presented in a concert at Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival in September 2024. 

 

 

Portfolio overview 


Reflective materials and list of publications included in the reflective results are:


       Introduction

An opening section on the project with general information about the research: background, context, theory, the development of the concept of artistic palette, research questions and methodology. The design of the introduction is nonlinear with three columns.


       Gradients

First case study, on the collaborative work with Henrik Strindberg on the violin solo work Gradients (2023).



       Solastalgia

Second case study, about the collaborative work with Carola Bauckholt on Solastalgia (2022), for violin, electronics and video.




       One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin)

Third case study, discussing the shared work with Liza Lim on One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) (2021–22), for solo violin with low octave string. 



       Eiksmarka Omland

Fourth case study, about the collaborative work with Christian Wallumrød on violin and tape work Eiksmarka Omland (2024).


       Chain of Triggers

Fifth case study, about the shared work with Manos Tsangaris on the work with the publication Chain of Triggers (2024).


       Pango

Sixth case study, about my work on the electroacoustic work Pango (2021–24).


       Discussion

Following the reflective materials of the case studies and own compositional work, the discussion explores themes from the complete project cross-case. The design of the discussion is nonlinear with four columns.

The sonic palette


I formulated an artistic research project proposal problematizing my experiences of separated creativity. I decided to experiment with the starting point of the compositional process. Following my education in the conservatoire system – on which I will elaborate below – I was skilled in interpreting the different styles and musical languages of composers. I now asked: what would happen if the composer turned to my skills as starting point? Initially, the title of my project was Reversed Output, capturing this shift in creative output in the initial stages of the compositional process. 


My wish to participate in the idea-formation stage of new works required me to develop new skills. I was not used to proposing ideas based on my personal way of performing and the repertoire of personal sonic materials. I knew I had a broad performance experience and highly developed technical skills. However, I was not accustomed to formulating my ideas and bringing them into creative processes with composers. I felt a need to concretize and conceptualize the sonic and performative materials I wanted to contribute. I needed a concept to embrace the sonic elements that were specific and dear to me. The metaphor of an artist’s palette in sound came to my mind – my sonic palette.


My sonic palette was structured primarily around sounding materials connected to my personal way of performing – materials that always invited me to continue exploring and developing. I felt a degree of ownership of those materials, and I regarded my way of playing them as unique. I had explored and further developed several extended playing techniques as part of my sonic palette, including my personal ways of phrasing, treating sound quality and developing extended techniques. There were techniques that I had developed over years of performing, including violin timbres that challenge the classical sound ideal, such as experimentation with contact points, bow speed and pressure. And I had come to recognize these as something of a personal specialism. The extended bowing techniques that I had developed through performing new repertoire I also regarded as personal to me: these included different kinds of tremolo, bouncing bow techniques, over pressure, flautando, as well as circular and vertical ways to bow the violin. I had developed virtuosity in the extreme high register of the violin and had worked extensively with harmonics. I had experience of performing with electronic materials such as different microphones, pedals and pre-recorded tape parts. Further, my sonic palette embraced my history as a performer. Since my childhood, I had played traditional Swedish folk music from my home region of Dalarna, Sweden. This tradition left a mark on my way of performing that affected my way of engaging with contemporary classical music. Those skills and materials were captured by my sonic palette and thus intended to act as starting point and inspiration for new works.

 


Artist-composers and case studies


My explorations of the sonic palette needed to be carried out in hands-on practice, by working together with composers. I therefore asked five artist-composers to explore my questions with me: Carola Bauckholt, Liza Lim, Henrik Strindberg, Manos Tsangaris and Christian Wallumrød. With each composer, I planned to co-create a solo work for violin as a case study. I had already shared artistic processes around new works with some of these composers; others were new acquaintances for me. I wanted to work with a diverse group of artists active in different strands of contemporary music. I wished to cover improvisation, music theatre, minimalist influences, elements of traditional music and electronic elements. Further, it was important for me to have a team including both men and women, as I always strive for gender equality in my concert programmes and commissions. The composers I asked to join me came from different countries and backgrounds; they lived in Norway, Sweden, Germany and Australia. They were all open, kind and curious people, and I trusted that they would enter into the project whole-heartedly. But in making the important decision of what composers to approach, my primary concern was to choose composers whose music interested me and gave me joy. When designing my research project, I wished to connect their compositional activities to my sonic palette as a way of learning more about how they worked and creating a personalized repertoire where our sonic palettes were merged.


Carola Bauckholt (b. 1959) is a German composer and former student (1978–1984) of music theatre composer Mauricio Kagel. Her works explore unconventional ways of producing sounds, such as extended techniques on classical instruments and using everyday objects to generate sounds. Her compositions challenge the boundaries between concert music, music theatre and visual arts. She is a professor of composition at Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität in Linz. Carola and I had worked together on new ensemble works as well as on the violin and electronics solo Doppelbelichtung (2016), which was created partly through a shared process which came to influence the ideas behind my research project. 


Liza Lim (b. 1966) is an Australian composer whose work centres on collaboration, transcultural ideas, ecological connection, threads, strings, knots and temporal perspectives. Liza’s compositional practice is closely connected to her work with the Australian ensemble ELISION. She is professor of composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Prior to my research project, Liza and I had worked together on new ensemble music with Norwegian group Cikada, where Norwegian traditional music was brought into the framework of the contemporary ensemble work Winding Bodies: 3 Knots (2014). The way Liza brought traditional music into a contemporary sonic landscape sparked my idea to propose to her a solo work that took my heritage in traditional Swedish folk music as starting point. 


Swedish composer Henrik Strindberg’s (b. 1954) music has been described as ‘organic minimalism’, in which rhythm and sound are the main parameters explored. Henrik additionally has a background in the Swedish progressive rock movement. Henrik wrote the violin solo Femte strängen for me in 2009, a virtuosic exploration of arpeggiated harmonics. The work is one of the solos I performed most often, and it inspired me to continue working with Henrik. 


German composer and musician Manos Tsangaris (b. 1956) is, like Carola Bauckholt, a student of Mauricio Kagel. Tsangaris works with large-scale music theatre installations as well as chamber music, poetry and percussion performances. I did not know Manos before the start of my artistic research project, but I was interested in the way he integrated music and visual elements into unique worlds, often with a trace of humour and surprise.


Christian Wallumrød (b. 1971) is a Norwegian musician and composer. Christian leads his own ensemble, the Christian Wallumrød Ensemble and collaborates with a wide range of artists from the fields of improvised, classical, traditional and contemporary music. Christian and I had not worked together before this project, but I was interested in the way influences of traditional music, improvised music and jazz seemed to flow effortlessly in his ensemble, creating a personal idiom. 

My artistic background


My practice as a violinist on the international scene for contemporary Western art music has provided me with a diverse artistic context. I have longstanding relationships with many composers, performers and ensembles. Over the years, I have premiered hundreds of works, written either for me as a soloist or for the ensembles I work with. I have worked with medium-sized chamber music groups, sometimes including conductor, such as Cikada (Norway) and neoN (Norway), as well as duos and trios such as Duo Hellqvist/Amaral (Sweden/Norway) and Faint Noise (Sweden), and considerably larger ensembles such as the Oslo Sinfonietta (Norway). A year into my fellowship period I released my first solo album, Flock, with LAWO Classics, comprising solo works resulting from my commissions. I have worked alongside student composers as well as well-established artists. My repertoire includes works using media of different kinds: everything from pre-recorded fixed tape parts to advanced live electronics run by the composer on stage, I have worked with video scores as well as performance works where I speak or act.


The aesthetics of the different works varied as well. I have performed works where I play on objects such as soda cans or home-made percussion instruments rather than on my violin. Other works have pushed the borders of my violin technique to its utmost and have required years of practice. Most of the music I have engaged with is written relatively close in time to my performance of it, but I have also engaged in modern classics of the last 100 years. The artists in this project have inspired me and introduced me to new musical territory. I have worked closely with Carola Bauckholt and Henrik Strindberg on new solo works written for me, and have premiered ensemble works by Liza Lim and Carola Bauckholt. I have been to concerts by Christian Wallumrød and, via accounts from colleagues and online resources, I know of the music theatre works by Manos Tsangaris. This rich artistic context that has evolved with my practice as a performer over the years has provided me with an aesthetic background to my taste and preferences in music; I have created an artistic context from the music and style that I enjoy.

 


The artistic palette


Having enrolled as a PhD fellow, I soon felt empowered to experiment and expand my practice further. I widened my ambitions to be involved not only in the concept formation of the piece, but in more extensive parts of the compositional process. The elements of the sonic palette were important building blocks in the work with the composers. However, as my budding collaborative practice started taking shape, I began to see how important certain skills and abilities were in creative processes. With my wish to participate more in the compositional process, my contribution could not be limited to introducing sonic elements as inspiration or starting point. I began to notice that I used other abilities in meetings with the composers and the music. Those abilities were connected to the sonic elements, but they reached further into the process and composition. There were ‘hard skills’, like mastering new audio technology, developing performance techniques, communicating through sketches or videos, developing form and context and sharing my tradition and background. And ‘soft skills’ also emerged: connecting to my embodied knowledge, communicating my wishes and ideas, understanding, negotiating, searching. Increasingly, my focus shifted from the audio-materialistic aspects of the sonic palette to the skills I needed in order to create with them, and the skills I used in the creative partnerships.


With the increased focus on skill and doing rather than on sonic materials, about a year into the project, I felt as if I needed to expand the somewhat narrow concept of the sonic palette. I understood that I needed a concept to embrace more of my personal artistic identity. Hence, the sonic palette expanded into the artistic palette. At first, my new concept was a rather expansive thing. I wanted the artistic palette to embrace everything personal and specific that I used in creative work. Besides personal sonic materials, it included my history, personality, aesthetic preferences and ways of interacting – it embraced my entire artistic identity. This expansion from materials to abilities was an empowering process. As a performer accustomed to thinking of creativity primarily as located in the practice of composers and connected to the musical works I perform, I now discovered creativity everywhere in my practice. The artistic palette was holistically embracing my personal and creative self.


However, through the creative work in my artistic research, I experimented with different ways to define and my artistic palette and give it firmer shape. In its developing stages, the artistic palette offered me sensations of empowerment and agency, but lacked specificity. It left a mark on my practice and way of thinking but was elusive when I tried to describe it. I struggled to define the concept clearly and even to explain why I needed a term to conceptualize something like my artistic identity.


During the process of writing an article (Hellqvist Forthcoming a) about Solastalgia, which I composed with Carola Bauckholt, I received feedback from a peer reviewer. This feedback made me think about the artistic palette as primarily composed of abilities and skills. The two words are nearly synonymous, and are often used interchangeably, but for my purposes there is a subtle difference, in that a skill is more specific than an ability. In discussing my experiences in this project I sometimes bracket the skills and abilities together, and I have developed for this the term skillabilities. Thinking of the skillabilities I need and use in creative work, what first come to mind are hard, concrete skills such as mastering the artistic media: the violin, notation and tools such as audio technology. However, during the project, several less obvious abilities have also proved to be important, many of them connected to inner processes of thought and emotion that I rarely verbalize. Typical abilities might include articulating my ideas about aesthetic aspects of a work to my collaborator, compromising, communicating and bringing in my preferences in discussions. Some abilities are tacitly embedded in my embodied knowledge and can be brought out through artistic or verbal language. Further, there are new skills that I imagine and develop that add to the artistic palette.


Starting point


This artistic research project had its beginning in 2018. However, its central lines of thought had already been evolving for several years when I enrolled as a PhD fellow at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo. In 2018, I had been active on the international scene for contemporary Western art music for a decade. Working as a freelance musician in different ensembles and as a soloist, I commissioned new works, creating my own repertoire, artistic profile and performance schedule. I worked alongside composers of various ages, aesthetic directions and stages of recognition, and I came to know many of them personally and built working partnerships with them. The pace of my portfolio career was fast; there were constantly new pieces to study, rehearsals to attend, applications to write and concerts to prepare. Through my engagement with contemporary music, I accumulated a broad experience of concert performance, idiomatic composition for my instrument, notation, ensemble work and performing with different kinds of technology.


I regarded my practice as creative in many ways. Building my personal solo repertoire, participating in the development of ensemble identities, performing internationally and interpreting new works was challenging and exciting. However, when it came to the compositional process itself, I became keenly aware that the generation of ideas and the decision making regarding artistic concepts and sonic materials were located primarily in the practice of the composer. Additionally, this division of work was rarely discussed. Usually, I received scores that the composer considered to be more or less finished, and I thus had little insight into how the works in my repertoire were written or what the conceptual ideas behind them were. Even though I knew the composers well, I felt that the overlap or creative exchange between our processes was limited. I sometimes felt unsatisfied with the way commissioned works turned out, and because of performance difficulties or limited interest in the material, I did not always reach the point of performing them in concert. Other works offered me joy, and they challenged me to develop my technique and performance skills. Some were great pieces of music, too! However, I often experienced a feeling of disconnection toward them. My limited participation in the creative process left me with little sense of ownership.


I increasingly came to regret that the knowledge I had acquired over the years was not brought into the compositional process more frequently. I wanted my expertise and musicianship to serve to enrich these compositions with my personal voice. I wanted to develop a greater sense of ownership, understanding, responsibility and connection to my repertoire. Instead of waiting until commissioned works were completed to see how they had turned out, I wanted to follow their growth from seed to bloom. A substantial change in the way I worked as a musician was becoming necessary for me in order to see a future work-life of performing contemporary music. I asked myself: what would happen if I was involved when the initial ideas of the piece were imagined? Could the process of envisaging the aesthetic, performative and technical aspects of the musical work be shared? Could new works written for me take my personal way of performing both as a source of inspiration and as concrete material? Inspired by colleagues who pursued research on various aspects of their music-making, I decided to frame those questions within an artistic research project. As research carried out from within an artistic practice with the aim to transform it through the artmaking, artistic research seemed to provide the perfect framework for me to explore my questions further. I was longing for a space where I could dedicate time and thought to finding out how my performance practice could include new ways of being creative.

 

Viewing my artistic palette as a collection of skills and abilities has brought the concept into focus for me. But I don’t want to oversimplify: my artistic palette also embraces the personal competence that I use when engaging in creative work. As I engage with the artist-composers in my project, I see that they, too, enter the shared work with a personal set of skillabilities: their own artistic palettes. In the course of our joint work, their artistic palettes develop just as mine does.


I use different parts of my artistic palette in different situations. The artistic palette is a shape-shifter: it activates, develops and adapts with the creative projects I am engaged in. It is not confined to my role as a violinist specializing in contemporary Western art music. Rather, it is driven by exploration and imagination in the musicmaking. I see the artistic palette as an open concept – one that is not precisely defined but intentionally embraces ambiguity. This means that rather than giving a strict definition of what the artistic palette is, I think of what it does. I see it evolving with me in my creative practice. I use it as a tool for thinking, practicing, creating and collaborating. Intentionally, I want it to be thought-evoking and poetic, rather than delimiting or regulative. 

 

Without imposing too much definition and finite character to it, a few overarching traits can be assigned to the artistic palette:

 

  • It comprises personal skills and abilities that I use in creative work.
  • Engaging with it can create concrete personal artistic and sonic materials.
  • It is dynamic: it develops and changes with my artistic encounters.
  • I use different parts of it in different situations; it is shape-shifting and situation-dependent.
  • It is a poetic concept; comprising expressions of emotion, beauty and playfulness.
  • It is empowering and connected to the agency I have and develop.
  • It is relational, affected by relations to different agents in my musicmaking such as instruments, technology and collaborators.
  • It is personal and linked to me as an individual, yet it is embedded in the cultural and artistic context of which I am a part. 
  • It is linked to other agents such as the violin, technology, scores, collaborators, conversations, traditions and environment.
  • It is connected to my body, as the site where explicit and tacit embodied skills and abilities reside.
  • It is multidimensional, holding abilities in different dimensions.
  • It is connected to imagination and therefore linked to creativity and my future practice and identity.

 


The artistic palette as a multidimensional concept


During the work on Gradients with Henrik Strindberg, I explored the artistic palette as a multidimensional concept. The, embodied, contextual, relational and intuitive dimensions all hold different skills and materials used during the collaborative work, and I developed this idea in my article ‘Circular bowing, cyclical work’ (Hellqvist 2022a). Exploring the various potential dimensions of the artistic palette is a way of understanding more about it. Some abilities are interconnected and entangled through several dimensions, as all abilities may hold embodied, contextual, relational and intuitive aspects. 


The embodied dimension holds skillabilities connected to embodied knowledge. Embodied knowledge is accumulated in my body over time by experiences preserved by the body’s memory. Some of this pre-reflective knowledge can uncover itself through my artistic explorations. My intuitive, personal way of playing trills and dynamics and experimenting with contact points of the bow on the strings, as well as my ability to create direction in melodic materials and improvisation are skills intertwined between the embodied and contextual dimension of my artistic palette. My ability to engage with this often-tacit embodied knowledge serves as inspiration for several of the works. As elaborated on in the case study One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) (Lim, with Hellqvist, 2021–2022), Liza and I were exploring embodied knowledge connected to my heritage of traditional Swedish folk music, set in the framework of contemporary Western art music. During the process of creating Solastalgia (Bauckholt & Hellqvist 2022), my mapping process was partly built on my embodied and intuitive reactions to the sound of the Arctic landscape; through listening to the ice in my headphones and reacting to them by playing the violin, my body created responses to the texture of ice, snow, wind and water. I explain this process further in the case study about Solastalgia. With Henrik Strindberg, our focus during the compositional process of creating Gradients, was to research and capture the personal ways in which I perform certain playing techniques. We investigated what felt ‘right’ in my hands and arms as I played those techniques.


Skills and abilities residing in the contextual dimension are those that are connected to the context of the artwork and collaboration. They are linked with artistic materials, such as developing playing techniques, the ability to find a suitable tempo, to adopt to a certain style or to develop form. Skillabilities in the contextual dimension are closely intertwined with those of the other dimensions. Developing my ability to follow precisely the lines of the harmonium, in Eiksmarka Omland (Wallumrød & Hellqvist 2024) and formulating a form proposal in the early compositional stages of Gradients (Hellqvist & Strindberg 2023) are related to the context of the pieces. The artistic palettes of my collaborators and their past engagement with new music can further be linked to the contextual dimension. Also, skillabilities connected to the style of violin solo works in the same genre as well as geographical styles of new music and references to my wider repertoire are located in the contextual dimension.

           In the relational dimension of the artistic palette, I find abilities connected to communication and interaction with other artists. As I engage in collaborative work, the relational dimension is the structure upon which the other layers are communicated. Abilities to compromise, discuss, suggest, understand other’s perspectives and respond have been emerging in my practice through the collaborative work. During the project, new collaborative territory has opened in my practice and hence also the skills of co-operation. Developing a cyclical work mode for several years with Henrik Strindberg and sharing personal elements of my daily life with Manos Tsangaris during the Chain of Triggers exercise unfolded in the case study about Chain of Triggers (Tsangaris & Hellqvist 2024) are examples of abilities connected to the relational dimension. Further, online communication with Carola Bauckholt during the pandemic in order to develop our verbal conversations into mappings as well as studying music and texts by Liza Lim before our shared work started are relational abilities. 


           Lastly, the intuitive dimension represents abilities connected to the feelings and driving forces behind the creative projects – my personal taste, values, desires, struggles and fears. It is connected to my artistic self. Intuition is knowledge or understanding that arises from feelings rather than concrete evidence. Engaging with the artistic palette has been an intuitive way of acting in line with my values to create the collaborations and practice that I desire. Establishing a connection, building trust, connecting to my aesthetic taste and acting responsibly and ethically are important abilities that I have cultivated throughout the project. For example, I have been able to take increased responsibility for the works created in the project and I have had to manage my shyness when it comes to being creative in new aesthetic territories. Creating Pango was a way of facing intuitive skillabilities. Composing on my own forced me to tune into my aesthetic taste and preferences as well as facing my fears of not being a good enough composer. Further, the ability to keep following my wish to create connection and responsibility toward works and collaborators in the project connects me to my core values and is a part of the artistic palette.


            The artistic palette is complex. Even in its slightly narrower form of comprising my personal skillabilities, it is tied to my environment, history, tradition, experience and relations. During my fellowship I struggled to grasp it and find words to explain it. Towards the end of my fellowship period, I came to understand that the idea of the complex and multidimensional artistic palette resonates with post-humanist thought in line with thinkers like Karen Barad and Donna Haraway. In post-humanism, the Anthropocene view of the human beings as central is challenged. Exploring the artistic palette through post-humanist lines of thought is not within the scope of the project but could potentially be an interesting path for further research. When engaging with the artistic palette, both non-human and human agents are active – such as the violin, technology, collaborators, conversations, notation, the traditional Swedish folk music and the sounds of the Arctic landscape. Those agents all contribute to and influence the nature and development of the artistic palette. The skills and abilities of the artistic palette form parts of a rich web of interdependent actors. This is a subject on which I have only had time to scrape the surface, but I would like to explore it more deeply in the future.


            The concept of the artistic palette is inspired by the artist’s palette, and this analogy has been in my mind since writing my initial project proposal. In the art of oil painting, a palette is a personal board that an artist uses to blend the colours she wishes to use in the moment. The act of blending and searching on the palette for the right nuance is an intimate process, unique to every artist. It is a complex act, influenced by several elements. Both the personal bodily act of using the brush and the driving forces and values behind the act of painting are unique to the painter. And so, too, is my artistic palette – both my skillabilities and my creative drive – unique to me; it cannot be replicated. The way I interact with my collaborators, my history, my preferences and my body, they are all unique aspects of who I am. They are the colours I work with in my artistic creation. As legendary cellist Mstislav Rostropopovich (1927–2007) is said to have put it ‘You know creators, composers, need a palette for life, a color for life’ (Steinberg 2017).

Project timeline, Transforming with the Artistic Palette, 2018-2024

E-booklet Palette.

Karin Hellqvist,

LAWO Classics.

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Practice, role, transformation, performance and identity

 

In this portfolio, I write about my ‘practice’ and ‘role’ as a performer. The term ‘practice’ within music has several different meanings. There is the act of practising that musicians engage in to develop the skills of playing instruments and learning music. There is also the overarching common practice within a field of music – for example performing music in a certain way depending on historical aspects. Further, there is the individual artistic practice that can be defined as ‘something that is usually or regularly done, often as a habit, tradition, or custom’. One’s ‘role’, on the other hand, is a position or purpose within a specific situation or relationship. Prior to the project, my performance practice was situated in the field of performance of contemporary classical Western art music. It embraced the activities I engaged in during the artistic process: violin playing, concert performance, artistic collaboration, studying scores, ensemble work, imagining future work, writing, listening to music and so on. Although not necessarily classical in its core repertoire, it carried the typical characteristics of a classical performer’s practice. I did not engage in composition and rarely improvised. In interpreting musical works, I aimed to stay as faithful to the score as possible, and my practice did not overlap substantially with that of the composer. I was result-oriented, in the sense that I did not participate in explorative compositional process but focused on the musical work as an end-product.

 

My artistic practice as explored in this project is tied to transformation, a central concept in my research. As the project title, ‘Transforming with the Artistic Palette’ suggests, one of the overarching aims of my research has been to embrace the transformation of my role and practice through the art-making of the project. The reflection of my research project unfolds how changes in work methods, mindset, understanding, skills, abilities and relations take place in my work and practice over the course of the project. Those changes together contribute to a gradual transformation of my performer’s role toward a more creating one.

 

Further, I see my performer’s role as performed through my work as a performer. From my education on, I have been, at some level, acting the role of classical performer; I perform the relationships with the composer, the notated score, colleagues, technology and the instrument. Following John L. Austin (1962), performance scholar Erika Fischer-Lichte (2008, p. 24) writes about how speech, together with a number of other, non-linguistic conditions, has a transformative power. By using language together with institutional or social rituals, I perform the social act of being a performer. My role is rooted in the act of performing it, and therefore, I can also transform my role through the act of performance. Ficher-Lichte further writes that ‘performative acts (as bodily acts) are “non-referential” because they do not refer to pre-existing conditions, such as an inner essence, substance, or being supposedly expressed in these acts; no fixed, stable identity exists that they could express’ (Fisher-Lichte 2008, p. 27). My performer’s role is not a fixed and stable identity; it is dynamic, and is created through its performance. As I will develop below, through my exploration of the artistic palette, I see my practice transforming and expanding. New activities, territories and roles are added to my practice as I start engaging and performing new activities.

 

The performative aspects of the artistic palette are further linked to identity as seen from a social constructionist perspective. Researchers Hargreaves, Miell and McDonald (2002, p. 10) discuss the social constructionist view of the self as ‘formed and developed continuously through conversation and interaction with others’. They write that ‘social constructionist theories suggest that people have many identities, each of which is created in interaction with other people, rather than having a single, core identity’ (Hargreaves et. al 2002, p. 10). They further see music as a medium through which new identities can be explored or shifted in the same way as with spoken language (2002, p. 10). 

 

When identity is seen as continuously developed through our social relations, the self of the future is tangible. Markus and Nurius (1986, p. 954) introduce the term ‘possible selves’, representing ‘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’. Possible selves are important ‘first, because they function as incentives for future behaviour (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). I will discuss the connection between the repertoire of possible selves and the intuitive dimension of the artistic palette below.

 

 

Mindset of the artistic palette

 

In arguing that my engagement with the artistic palette is connected to identity-making and future selves, I would like to point out two acts of empowerment in the project: the act of engaging with and developing the different skillabilities of the artistic palette in creative work, and the act of viewing myself as an artist with an artistic palette – what I will refer to as the mindset of the artistic palette. To view myself as an artist with an artistic palette is to form a mindset that acknowledges my skillabilities; and this is empowering. Thus, the artistic palette, as well as being grounded in the concrete making of art, is also a concept to think with. During this project I am both using and thinking with the artistic palette in my everyday practice. I often find myself moving between the mindset of the faithful performer and the creating one. The mindset of the faithful performer restricts the ways in which I can be creative. Free engagement in composition and improvisation is not supported by this mindset. The faithful mindset’s main focus is not to unleash unrestricted creativity, but to achieve a high-quality reproduction according to given guidelines in the score. During the course of the project, I have practised unlearning this mindset by replacing it with new ones. By reminding myself of the creative potential I embody with the artistic palette, I become a creating artist. Genre boundaries seem less frightening, improvisation is attractive, technology becomes a way of expressing myself and I verbalize and speak up for the musical ideas I have. The artistic palette becomes my code word for unrestricted creativity. Entering this mindset represents a shift in my view of myself. Prior to the research project, I knew I used skillabilities connected to creative work. But the process itself of conceptualizing them and concretizing them with the concept of the artistic palette has empowered me.

Ownership in collaboration

 

Ownership of music as we know it from modern copyright laws is regulated through the score and owned by the composer. This project challenges that by acknowledging the co-creativity in the act of performance. What are the implications of this recognition of performance as co-creation for our understanding of ownership of music?

 

In the closing discussion of this portfolio I review the different kinds of ownership that evolved in my project. I argue that ownership of the score and performance are different things and I articulate the various ways that ownership has been treated in the case studies in the project. I suggest ways in which ownership can be reviewed and expressed to better fit the idea of a co-creating performer participating in the compositional process. 

 

The visiting musicologist mentioned above questioned whether the sounds of the sonic palette really belonged to me. In my view, on a philosophical level beyond that of legal ownership, I own a sound when I create it on my violin no less than when I notate it in a score. In this project, the act of using my artistic palette to engage in the compositional process has made this questioning of the ownership of co-created music a necessity. Consequently, several of the works created in my project deal with ownership in ways that are new to me.

 

Through collaborative artmaking, this project challenges the established view of individual ownership of ideas in the composition of music. I see music-making as a social process, influenced by the surrounding environment. This view of music is explored by Christopher Small in his concept of musicking, which treats ‘music’ as a verb. In Small’s view (1998, p. 9), to music is to ‘take part, in any capacity in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is called composing), or by dancing’. All agents involved in facilitating a musical performance are taking part in the act of musicking. As contributions to the musical performance are seen as distributed by a range of different agents, the idea of sole ownership of a musical work is problematized. Musicologist Nicholas Cook has written about the social aspects of music-making in Between Process and Product: Music and/as Performance (2001). Cook (2001, p. 1) draws on interdisciplinary performance theory, suggesting that by thinking of scores as ‘scripts’ rather than ‘texts’, performance can be understood as ‘a generator of social meaning’. In a wider sense, educational psychologist Vera John-Steiner (2000, p. 3) describes a growing community of scholars who regard ‘learning and thinking as social processes’. In his postlude to the anthology Collaborative creative thought and practice in music (Barrett, 2014), Keith Sawyer writes about the rigorous empirical study that has emerged over several decades, demonstrating the central role of collaboration and interaction in social action. He describes a shift ‘away from a focus on individual creative processes and personalities, and towards a focus on collaboration, community, and shared social practices’ (Sawyer, 2014, p. 272).

 

In the years leading up to my research, I had the occasional experience of seeing a composer translate substantial improvised elements or specific sounds that I created during workshops into musical notation. Ideas I perceived as connected to my personal way of performing ended up in a musical work, but with the sole name of the composer on it. My contribution was nowhere acknowledged. As a young performer, I accepted this – sometimes even felt some pride that I could contribute to the work and that the composer found my creativity interesting. This experience has been described by others as the performer delivering their ‘box of tricks’ to the composer for them to use freely in the piece. Composer Fabrice Fitch and cellist Neil Heyde write about their joint work on cello solo Per Serafino Calbarsi II: Le Songe de Panurge (2002–3). Collaboration, they say, 

is frequently a matter of the performer giving the composer access to his ‘box of tricks’, or of the composer presenting notated sketches to be tried out, adopted, discarded, or refined. Such pragmatic approaches may well be beneficial to both parties, but they come at the cost of reinforcing the boundaries inherent in their respective roles. (Fitch & Heyde, 2007, p. 73)

Today, enriched with experience and the knowledge it brings, I no longer feel comfortable with this collaboration model. As Fitch and Heyde point out, this model only reinforces the boundaries between composer and performer. Taken to its logical extreme, this compositional approach becomes a way of colonizing performer creativity. When the artistic palette of the performer ends up in notation that is then communicated as owned or invented by the composer, aren’t the performer’s ideas in fact being colonized? Or is this process of structuring materials really embedded in the activity of composition? In this project I have explored the idea of collective ownership of ideas and a different approach to ownership, testing the fuzzy boundary between music that is co-created and co-owned and that which is created – and thus owned – by a sole individual. The artistic palette is not merely a ‘box of tricks’ – it is deeply connected to the personality, history and body of the individual to whom it belongs.


            In my research, I have used researchers Keith Sawyer and Stacy DeZutter’s non-individualistic concept of distributed creativity. According to Sawyer and DeZutter (2009, p. 82), distributed creativity ‘occurs in situations where collaborating groups of individuals collectively generate a shared creative product’. The concept of distributed creativity further challenges the idea that creativity is a ‘mental process that occurs in one person’s head’ (Sawyer & DeZutter 2009, p. 82). In light of the case studies, I will be discussing whether the idea of distribution can be used in terms of ownership, in order to embrace the different ownerships surrounding musical works.

 

The me-specific as starting point

 

In what ways has the music created in this project been impacted by my viewing myself as a creative performer with a unique artistic palette? In all five collaborations, the premise from the beginning was to take the me-specific in some form as a starting point. I made this clear to my collaborators from the start. How this played out in practice evolved in various ways in the various partnerships. Focusing on my artistic palette has created a wealth of musical materials and helped me to established connection, understanding, knowledge exchange, friendship and trust in the creative partnerships. None of this has diminished the importance I ascribe to the skills the composers bring to the enterprise. Rather, it has created space for new modes of knowledge to flourish as the composer focuses on the personal ways I perform.

 

            With Liza Lim, the starting point of our explorations was my unique history of performing Swedish folk music and the embodied knowledge that I have acquired through it. My personal body as a knowing subject has been inscribed into the work’s identity. This is further elaborated on in detail in the chapter discussing One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin). With Henrik Strindberg, my particular way of performing and developing certain performance techniques, such as the circular bow stroke, was carefully researched for years before we used our findings to jointly create the solo violin work Gradients (Hellqvist & Strindberg 2023). We circulated materials between us, exploring how materials are personalized by me and how our respective aesthetic tastes could harmonize in the composition (Hellqvist 2022). The tape part of Solastalgia (2022), co-composed with Carola Bauckholt, includes a multitude of recordings created with the intention of capturing my reactions to the sounds of the Arctic landscape. My practice of mapping is a process of tuning in to intuitive reactions through the embodied act of playing the violin. This process is further explored in the chapter on Solastalgia (Hellqvist 2024).

 

            In Eiksmarka Omland, created together with pianist and composer Christian Wallumrød (2024), the starting point was my wish to create a duet with another performer and improviser, capturing our personal ways of improvising and interpreting a melody. Chain of Triggers (2024), created with Manos Tsangaris, involves another meeting between practices – here our shared explorations of triggers, built on a long game-like process of creating connection and trust between us. We were not acquainted with each other before the work started, the Chain of Triggers became a way of getting to know each other’s interests, preferences and taste.

 

            In addition to taking the me-specific aspects of the artistic palette as starting point in creative partnerships, acknowledging creativity in my practice has empowered me to become increasingly creative with those materials. Consequently, by using my artistic palette, I have taken the step toward composing a work by myself, as I will elaborate on in the chapter on my own composition, Pango (Hellqvist 2020–24). 

 

 

Overlapping practices and knowledge exchange

 

Early in my fellowship, a performer colleague asked me why I did not just start composing myself, if what I wanted was a practice with more space for creation in it. In the course of my research, I came to realize that the collaborative way of creating music offers me endless opportunities to challenge my classical musician’s role. Composing alone would of course offer me space for creativity. But I suspect it would not create the same kind of transformation I’ve experienced when the practices of composition and performance overlap and influence each other. This project represents a gradual overlap between practices, rather than a sudden shift of my role from being a performer to a composer. In the case studies described in this portfolio, I explore examples of how collaboration can manifest, and how creativity can be located in the space shared by composer and performer. This research is carried out from my personal viewpoint. My account includes glimpses of the impact the project’s collaborations had on my fellow composers. But a thorough investigation of their experience is outside my scope here. The ways shared creative processes can transform the practices of the composers would be an interesting topic for a future joint investigation. 

Research questions 

 

In this artistic research project, my explorations are connected to a set of questions I ask myself concerning the artistic palette and shared work with the five composers.


  • What can the artistic palette do in my practice and how has it transformed during the course of the research project? 
  • How can the artistic palette act as a transformative resource for the music in shared creative work?
  • How can knowledge exchange and connection be increased (compared to what is common practice in the field) with a greater overlap between personalized practices in creative partnerships?
  • How have I been involved in the idea-generation and decision-making in the compositional processes of the project and how has my involvement affected my sense of influence and ownership toward the musical work?
  • How can the artistic palette transform my practice towards become a more creating performer?

 

 

Perspectives on performer creativity

 

After a few weeks as a research fellow at the Norwegian Academy of Music I was asked to give a presentation of my project to a British performer and musicologist who was visiting the faculty. As a young researcher, I did my best to describe the sounds and materials of the sonic palette that I hoped to bring into the collaborative work in the project. It was my ambition that, by highlighting those artistic contributions that I made, focus would turn to creativity in my practice. However, the guest musicologist challenged me to sharpen my arguments. He asked: what is special about the sounds of the sonic palette? Can’t any violinist play them? What is specific in your way of performing them, and do those sounds really belong to you? If represented in musical notation, couldn’t any performer reproduce them?

 

            As a young researcher on a journey toward expanding my classical performer’s role, I had not yet formulated a response to the questions posed. As a performer engaged in the process of creating new music, I believe that the musicologist himself adheres to the idea of agency and uniqueness of each performer’s performance. However, by asking me those questions, he painted the picture of a view of creativity in classical music that tends to situate creativity predominantly in the notated musical work rather than in the performance of it. In this view, the performer could be seen as the skilled artisan mastering their craft, while the composer is the visionary artist, creating the art. By asking me these questions, the musicologist identified a prevailing assumption in classical music that I needed to test and challenge in the course of my research.

 

            In the years since that encounter, the framework of artistic research has offered me the opportunity to reflect upon why I regard those sounds that I play as connected to me, just as much as other performers have a repertoire of personal materials. I have explored how unique and personal my artistic palette is, I have investigated my potential ownership of sonic elements and why it matters that I am performing and not any other violinist. The question of whether a sound can ‘belong to me’ remains uncertain for me. The process of reflecting on ownership, agency and recognition of the personal in my performance is a path I am still on. The sounds I engage with in my performance are part of a larger social, artistic and cultural discourse. I do not see them as necessarily as ‘owned’ or ‘belonging’ to myself, neither solely belonging to the composer’s score. I see them as reflections coming out of the social processes of music-making. In this project I want to problematize the view, largely dominating thinking about music today, that those sounds belong solely to the score and composer. By creating and engaging with the artistic palette, I am progressively bringing agency, creativity and ownership into my role as a performer. Before explaining further, a brief review of the European conservatoire tradition will be useful. 

            Wishing to create a change in my practice, I have undertaken this transformative research project. However, this choice does not suggest a devaluation of other performers’ wish to stay within the performer’s role created in the conservatoire system. Similarly, I have so far chosen to devote my work-life primarily to performing contemporary classical music, but this does not mean that I do not enjoy ‘earlier’ classical music or wish for this music to flourish today and in the future. 

 

            During my studies at four different European conservatoires over seven years, those institutions still to considerable degree held the idea of the faithful performer of musical works dear. The name conservatoire itself, underlines their function to preserve the traditions of the classical music. Today, not least with the inclusion of artistic research at those institutions, many of them are in the process of reframing education to better fit the modern music field and including more critical perspectives. One example is REACT – Rethinking Music Performance in Higher Education (https://react.web.ua.pt), a knowledge-generating international network aiming to develop a new pedagogical model aligned with the demands that musicians meet in today’s working life. But my training did not cover activities that questioned the idea of the faithful rendering of a score as the main purpose of my studies. Unless I actively sought them out, I had no encounter with improvisation or composition, and no detours to other genres or courses in entrepreneurial skills to help me make a living outside of the orchestral context. After my studies, my practice departed from the path that my education prepared me for, in the sense that I mainly engaged with the newest classical music. However, I still saw myself as a faithful performer of musical works.

 

 

The specific artistic palette

 

What does it mean for my performance practice, if I accept the role of faithful performer of musical works and locate musical creativity predominantly in the act of composing rather than performance?

 

            If I assume that there is something like a faithful – and thus ‘correct’ – way of performing music, I limit my creative space as a musician. Musical notation is a powerful language for communicating musical ideas. However, the immense wealth of detailed creativity, craftmanship and meaning that resides in the act of performance cannot be condensed in, or regulated by, notation. Music happens as I perform it. Once I acknowledge that individuality, creativity and meaning reside in the specific way in which I perform a work, doors are opened to increased creativity. My artistic research is thus an experiment in making musical works deeply personal to me. Acknowledging the me-specific in my performance is both my motivation and my artistic method. This way of thinking about performer creativity departs from the view that any skilled performer can give a ‘correct’ version of a work via the score. Several performers can play the works or sounds in my repertoire, but that does not mean that each performer does not make substantial contributions to how the music sounds. In this project I aim to zoom in on those contributions.

 

            This view does not diminish the value of the creativity that composers pour into the act of composition. Rather, as I aim to show through my research, creativity in those complementary practices can influence and reinforce each other. It might seem like a small thing to say that it matters how I play a crushed bow stroke on my violin, as the British musicologist and I discussed at the research conference. However, my research has shown me that the act of locating creativity, importance, uniqueness and ownership in that specific sound can spark a row of effects.

 

 

The work-concept and Werktreue in my practice

 

Has the view of the performer’s subservient role toward the musical work been there forever? Has creativity always been seen as located mainly in the practice of the composer? According to Lydia Goehr in her seminal book The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, the regulative work-concept emerged as a consequence of several decades of societal, political and aesthetic change from the 1770s onwards (Goehr, 1992, p. 206). Before this time, ‘musicians did not see works as much as they saw individual performances themselves to be the direct outcome of their compositional activity … Rarely did musicians think of their music as surviving past their lifetime in the form of completed and fixed works’ (Goehr 1992, p. 185–186). This view is different from the construction of the classical canonized repertoire I carefully studied and reproduced. 

 

However, in the nineteenth century, the importance of the musical work became increasingly emphasized over its performance. Musicians began to think about music in new ways and music was also being produced differently from before. Goehr (1992, p. 206) phrases this shift in attitude as a move ‘away from seeing music as a means to seeing it as an end’ and notes that ‘musical production was now seen as the use of musical material resulting in complete and discrete, original and fixed, personally owned units. The units were musical works’ (Goehr, 1992, p. 206). Nineteenth-century composers furthermore became increasingly liberated from their service to extra-musical institutions like the church and court. Composers became independent creators, with autonomy to pursue their own careers. As free artists, composers developed new ways of making a living. During this time, scores also turned into products bought and consumed on the market. And with increased independence, came new social status (Goehr, 1992, p. 206). The composer was at the top of the hierarchy in the redrawn ecosystem of performer–composer–work.

 

The establishment of those regulative models of thought, which we know as the work-concept, additionally fuelled the development of ownership and copyright laws in the field of music. Before the 1800s, musicians did not own music in the sense we do today. Composed music was generally free to borrow, reuse or imitate. However, with the evolving work-concept, during the changing copyright laws of the 1800s, the legal ownership of musical works was being transferred from publishing houses to the composers themselves (Goehr, 1992, p. 218). ‘The new laws reflected the basic idea that composers are the first owners of their works, for it is they who put the works in permanent form’ (Goehr, 1992, p. 218).

 

Goehr further describes how performers now came to develop an increasing loyalty toward the work. This ideal is described by her concept of Werktreue (fidelity toward the work and its composer). Werktreue ‘emerged to capture the new relation between work and performance as well as that between performer and composer. Performances and their performers became subservient to works and their composers’ (Goehr, 1992, p. 231). Where performers are expected to deliver performances that are faithful to the score they interpret, there is little space to contribute with their own creativity. Performers become mediators of the meaning of music that is being located in the score. The question posed to me by the musicologist, of whether any performer can play my sounds if they are notated in a score, and the idea that the sounds would not belong to me but rather to the musical work, could be connected to the ideals of Werktreue. Loyalty to the composed musical work came to influence performance practice for the next 250 years, and it is inscribed in my education as a violinist. The concept of Werktreue offers historical perspective on the limited overlap between the practices of the composers I work alongside, and provides a context for understanding the friction I experience in my practice today.

 

 

Perspectives on my education in the conservatoire system

 

As a performer, I can identify with the picture Goehr draws, having experienced the implications of Werktreue in my role as a performer of contemporary classical music. What Goehr is suggesting is one way of viewing the emergence of the work-concept and Werktreue. A full discussion of the implications of the work-concept and Werktreue for Western art music is far beyond the scope of this artistic research project. However, learning about the concept of Werktreue has been important in the development of my research. My project explores a transformation of the conventional performer’s role that I perceived as restricting my space for creativity. In the process of this exploration, I have been engaging with theory in parallel to creative work, in order to develop an increasingly creative practice. The concept of Werktreue has served to situate my experiences of frustration in a wider historical context, and the project has been illuminated by my growing understanding of the history of the classical performer’s role. My transformed practice has evolved along with my understanding of the theory, and the two are intertwined.

 

At both the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and the Norwegian Academy of Music I was fortunate to study with violin professors who fully supported my interest in contemporary classical music. They themselves were pioneers of new music and acted as inspiring role models for the different kinds of repertoire that I wished to engage with. However, as a participant in the conservatoire tradition, engaging with theory was not a main focus. In retrospect, I can see how my practice was to a large degree text-less and little contextualized beyond that of the musical style of the works I studied and the biographical history of its composers. I was predominantly focused on mastering the performance of my instrument. During my seven years of study at higher institutions of music, I did not come across the theoretical term Werktreue, although its implications are embedded in my performance practice. I dare not say whether this was because that kind of discourse was not touched on in the course literature at the time or whether I simply did not take advantage of the opportunities to take such a course. When reading about Werktreue for the first time in the early stages of my research project I wondered why I had never heard about it earlier. Once I understood the concept, I realized that I was living with its implications, and that my role in music and the nature of my educational experience had a historical context. I found myself feeling angry when I realized that a classical performer’s role not only could embrace creativity in several directions, it had done so before the age of Werktreue. Although this discovery left me feeling resentful, I was also curious. During the first years of my fellowship, I undertook a rather heated process of revisiting my previous performance practice, as a way of understanding the impact that Werktreue had had on it.

UP

Several of the pieces in the project are composed partly during the pandemic. When working on Solastalgia, Carola Bauckholt and I could not see each other during the first years of developing materials, as we lived in Germany and Sweden respectively. This fact made me develop new work methods using audio technology as a way of composing with my own sounds. My practice of mapping evolved, as a way of communicating effectively with Carola. I entered the collaboration as a co-composer and contributed materials for the tape part. The pandemic set the boundaries in the beginning of my work with Manos Tsangaris, who lives in Germany, as well. Manos and I did not know each other at all in the beginning. Therefore, we developed a game-like practice and methodology of sharing, the Chain of Triggers. Every day for two months, we engaged in the practice of sharing details from our everyday life with each other. Through the form of pictures, sounds and reflections, we developed a personal connection that later became the foundation and material of our piece. With pianist, improviser and composer Christian Wallumrød, I initially hoped that improvisation would be a main method of building a common ground and exploring materials. However, the pandemic and my maternity leaves made it more difficult to meet than expected. This fact limited the amount of improvisation in our methodology. John-Steiner (2000, p. 9) mentions timing as one of the keys to whether a collaboration may result in transformative contributions. With the aspect of us needing to meet in order to improvise, the collaboration with Christian Wallumrød was presumably the one that suffered most from the implications the pandemic had on the project’s timing. Work was delayed by the fact that we could not meet, and in the end new work methods needed to be developed and some work therefore unfolded from a distance, online, via the exchange of sound files and sketches and over Zoom calls.   

 

The act of reflecting through writing has gone hand in hand with my artistic explorations during the whole project. Several of the texts written in the project are auto-ethnographic, meaning that I have used experiences from the artistic processes as material and reference. Ellis and Bochner (2000, p. 739) have written about auto-ethnography as a method for analysing people’s lives, displaying ‘multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural’. I use auto-ethnography to explore personal experiences from the research process. Several texts in this portfolio were written and published while the musical works still were being created. The publishing procedures have included different forms of peer-review. This has been a valuable process through which perspectives from other researchers has been offered, developing my research practice. The perspective that writing from inside of the process has offered has helped me understand and contextualize my experiences. Visual artist Jan Svenungson has said: ‘I don’t write to end the discussion’ (Svenungsson, 2007, p. 7). In the same way, I see writing as an ongoing process and discussion, just as the music keeps living in and beyond my project. Through my text writing, I have reflected around my experiences and new questions have arisen.

Figure 1 Types of shared imaginative working (Taylor, 2020, p.4) 

 

            I have applied Taylor’s way of analysing shared work in several of the case studies in this portfolio. I have used it to think about shared work in retrospect but also to imagine how I would like to see the case studies and other artistic activities to develop. Through this portfolio we can see that at the outset of my project, I was generally more focused on contributing with imaginative materials to the shared work, in line with the sonic palette. As the project developed, though, I became more attentive to decision-making and engaged more in it. Aside of the concept of Werktreue and the model that Alan Taylor draws, in each of the case studied described throughout this portfolio, different theoretical perspectives are used to discuss my findings.

 

            During my work with Liza Lim on One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin), I used Sawyer and DeZutter’s concept of distributed creativity to discuss our shared work. The concept of distributed creativity is used increasingly in research on shared work in music. In an anthology dedicated to exploring the nature of distributed creativity, researchers Eric Clarke and Mark Doffman (2017), describe the cultural and intellectual shift in the discourse on classical music and the relationship between composition, improvisation and performance. ‘Framed by conceptual developments in musicology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, computing and neuroscience, there is increased recognition (long overdue, one might think) of the extended and distributed character of music’s creative processes’ (p. 2).

 

            Liza Lim who has an extensive publication record herself, uses the analogy of fungal mycelia to describe the non-linear nature of collaboration and the idea of creativity as distributed in her practice, drawing on the ideas of anthropologist Tim Ingold. I discuss this further in the case study about One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin).

 

            In my research, I further draw on theories of embodiment with thinkers Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962) and the notion of tacit knowledge as introduced by Michael Polanyi (1966). My personal embodied knowledge of the artistic palette is explored in the reflection of the case study with Liza Lim on One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin).

 

 

Methodology

 

This is an artistic research project, meaning that music-making is at the core of my explorations. Henk Borgdorff (2010, p. 103) defines artistic research as ‘research where the research question is answered through artistic practice.’ Through the process of creating music in the ‘Transforming with the Artistic Palette’ project, questions regarding my role and collaborative work have been posed, explored and, sometimes, answered. Motivated by a need to change my practice as a performer, I have carried out research in this practice with the aim to transform it. 

 

            Through the different artistic activities that the project has comprised, new work methods have been developed. The methods of reflection and communication of the research findings have further been closely connected to the artistic processes. Borgdorff (2010, p. 107) describes how ‘artistic practice is not only the result of the research, but also its methodological vehicle, when the research unfolds in and through the acts of creating and performing’. In this project, work methods have often evolved as cyclical. Artistic activities have led to an engagement with a certain kind of literature, which then has led to the process of writing about my reflections, which in turn sparks new ideas for development of the artistic materials. Those cyclical processes of the project have thus constantly interwoven with other artist’s and researchers’ perspectives, situated in a larger artistic, social and cultural context.

 

Due to my two year-long maternity leaves and the part-time pace of study when caring for young children, as well as a prolongation due to the pandemic, this artistic research project has spanned six years. Although I was officially on leave for part of the time, creative processes continued to unfold even when I was on leave. The long time-span of the project has allowed for new work methods to develop. Some of the artistic processes as well as the reflective results in terms of publications and peer review would likely not have been possible to pursue during the regular three-year full-time studies.

 

The six case studies described in this portfolio all offer information about the ways in which the specific methods in the different projects have evolved. In this portfolio I use the term ‘case study’ in a general sense. This is not case study research as used within the social sciences, which encompasses a specific methodology and research design; my case studies are rather a set of collaborative musical relationships which I have studied to enrich my understanding of my own agency in the compositional process. The different descriptions of the works created in the project provide in-depth reasoning around the artistic processes while in the discussion of the artistic research project as a whole, I make cross-case analyses of aspects of the different case studies together.

 

Some of the methods adopted in the project have been connected to the process of verbalizing and communicating my embodied knowledge. In some artistic processes, focus has been directed toward the exploration and sharing of my embodied knowledge. I have thus developed a process of suggesting-by-doing, in which I participate in the compositional process by doing rather than talking; I will elaborate on this further below. This method has often taken place in workshop situations with elements of trial and improvisation as ways of generating new artistic material. 

 

My research method included observing and experimenting with different ways to communicate my experience of the artistic process. In the course of a research project spanning many years and with an abundance of information, it has not been my aim to collect everything. Deciding what to collect for observation has been a curatorial process in which the selection and composition of reflective elements have been important. I have looked for the materials I consider important to highlight for each case study: both the themes that reappear in other collaborations and the more case-specific ones.  

 

One example of how the artistic material itself has provided a guide to the best way to communicate the research results is the audio paper ‘Solastalgia: The voicing of a fading natural resource’ (Hellqvist 2022b), which tells the story of my collaborative work with Carola Bauckholt on Solastalgia. In place of the conventional printed text, this work is an audio product, comprising both spoken argumentation and argumentation in sound. The audio paper and the musical work Solastalgia were created in parallel. When creating the audio paper, I used artistic methods developed in the work with Carola, such as my mapping practice outlined in the case study about Solastalgia. Working in a DAW to create the audio paper, just as with the piece Solastalgia, turned the making of the audio paper into an artistic compositional process that reflecting on its own making. 

 

Reading different kinds of literature has been an important way of understanding and developing my role, reflecting around collaborative work, searching for new ideas and contextualizing my research. I have enjoyed reading musicological scholarship on collaboration as well as auto-ethnographic artistic research accounts. Sharing literature with fellow researchers has been important too, as well as exploring online research reflections on digital platforms as Research Catalogue.

 

Methods of engaging with technology play a significant role in the project. Some finished works include materials created in my DAW, and all of the works in the project have been partly created through various methods of recording, editing or communicating through a DAW. Technology has also facilitated communication with my collaborators as several of them live in other countries. Especially during the pandemic, online meetings and workshops were necessary in order to develop our shared work. New methods of organizing, structuring and documenting work from a distance were developed. 

 

Presenting the works of the project in concert gave me the opportunity to try out aspects of the works, for example how playing techniques work or how the form feels in a concert situation. In some cases, the compositional process has continued after the first performances of the pieces through revisions. Thus, concert performance has been a method with evaluative character rather than an end point, as was usually the case in my previous practice. I have also had the chance to present my research in various settings over the course of the project (see ‘Contribution and dissemination’). This has been a way of formulating and communicating aspects of my ongoing research and receiving feedback from peers. 

 

Searching for artistic materials, tuning in to taste and preferences and trying-out materials has become a practice and a work method. Emerging through collaborative creation in the meeting with others’ practices, several of the methods were new to me. Elements of experimentation, imagination and improvisation have come to the fore in the development of musical materials.

 

During the project, new forms of collaboration have been developed. In the various creative partnerships, concrete forms of working together have emerged from the development of artistic materials. With Henrik Strindberg, a cyclicalway of working was developed, when the artistic materials in Gradients were researched. Over several years, loops of emails, phone calls, Zoom talks, sketches and recordings circled between us. Traces of this cyclical way of working can be found in all collaborations. However, it became most evident during the work with Henrik, as technical and aesthetic aspects of our artistic materials were being discussed and processed in its smallest grain. With Liza Lim, a philosophical process of worldmaking took place before we met to work on One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin). I shared elements of folk music and histories from my home village and upbringing with Liza. Additionally, I read about Liza’s earlier work, attentive to points of contact between our practices. This process created a shared imaginative world upon which to build our piece – one of stories and speculation. During the period of workshops that followed, materials were tried out in what could be thought of as an instant co-creation. Liza drew a sketch, I tried it out straight away, we discussed it and reworked it where needed. Further, publicly presenting parts of our unfinished materials from the process also proved to be an important artistic method when developing the piece.

About the portfolio

 

Discovering and experimenting with writing has been a process parallel to that of finding my voice as a collaborator and artist. Writing has evolved to become a natural and creative part of my practice. I have submitted my texts to various artistic research journals. During the peer review processes, thoughts have the chance to be discussed and mature. This portfolio therefore includes a number of articles that are already peer-reviewed and published. I have published three articles and one audio paper outlining aspects of the case studies in established journals and publications for artistic research: VIS-Nordic Journal for Artistic Research, Seismograf, Arts Council Norway and The Journal for Artistic Research (JAR). The published articles act as satellite reflections, created during different stages in the project. I encourage the reader to keep in mind, while reading these articles, that my writing has developed with the project and that thoughts, skills and concepts have matured along the way, often in a complex, non-linear manner. My collected reflection is not written as a retrospect in the end of a long project, rather, it has emerged intertwined with the artistic results. Both my artistic methods and research methods have grown through repeated cycles of creation, performance and reflection. Art-making and language-art-making have followed in each other’s footsteps. I have explored and challenged myself with different ways to write and a plurality of languages. Hence, you’ll find reflections in the form of media files, an audio paper, an interview, the result of a game-like exercise as well as auto-ethnographic writing. Since the elsewhere-published articles in this portfolio are intended to work as standalone reflections on the project, they include thoughts on methodology, context and theory. There is naturally some overlap and repetition between materials may occur.


            My portfolio includes this introduction, which is a general opening section with information about the research: its background, context, theory, the artistic palette, research questions and methodology. Following the introduction, six case studies are discussed in detail. Those case studies are presented chronologically according to how the work in the project has unfolded. It is the path I suggest for the reader to engage with the material. While the case studies can be approached individually, and need not be read in their chronological order, the reader is encouraged to keep in mind that the reflective work in the project has evolved over the course of the research, and some reflections were published years prior to the final reflection was written in 2024. Further, materials that are published elsewhere have been through processes of peer review and have adopted the specific guidelines and issue themes of the research journals in which they appear, resulting in a diversity of formats and styles of writing. Materials published before the critical reflection was put together, in 2024, might include thoughts and ideas that have matured over the course of the project. In this way it is my hope that the reader can follow the emerging nature of the ideas of the project. 

 

 

 

Acknowledgements

 

During the years 2018–2024, I have had the immense privilege of being a research fellow at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo. The fellowship has provided me with generous resources of supervision and a creative research environment with colleagues on their own research journeys, as well as financial support. I am deeply grateful for this opportunity and the very special and privileged circumstances under which my research could be conducted.

 

Thank you …

 

Carola Bauckholt, Liza Lim, Henrik Strindberg Manos Tsangaris and Christian Wallumrød for the trust, connection, discussions, friendship, explorations and joy of making music together. Your generous and open way of sharing your practice and time with me have made the project possible.

 

Eric Lanz for discussions, input and for bringing your solastalgia into our artwork.

 

Tanja Orning, my main supervisor, for your ceaseless enthusiasm, inspiration and generous commitment to the project. You have offered me the perfect cocktail of guidance, support and challenge on my way of becoming a researcher. I will dearly miss our lengthy conversations.

 

Anders Førisdal, secondary supervisor, for entering the project toward its end and injecting it with new perspectives, wisdom and ideas for further research.


Aslaug Nyrnes, secondary supervisor, for the valuable perspectives and philosophical inspiration you have offered.

 

Second supervisors Daniel Karlsson and Jonas Backman for patiently teaching me the wizardry of audio technology.

 

Second supervisor Ingar Zach for inspiring improvisation sessions, concerts and discussions.

 

Designer Paul Wontorra for entering the work on Chain of Triggers with energy, fresh ideas patience. 

 

Lars, Nora, Dorotea and Majli for inspiration, patience, bliss and for giving me the opportunity to strive for a fuller self.

 

Laura Macy for your patience, effort and highly valuable help with copyediting my texts.

 

Malte Giesen and Andrei Cucu at Akademie der Künste Berlin as well as Daniel Miska and Michael Acker at SWR Experimentalstudio Freiburg for supporting the work and performances of Solastalgia.

 

Arts Council Norway for supporting One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) and Eiksmarka Omland.

 

Swedish Arts Grants Committee for supporting Solastalgia and Chain of Triggers.

 

Helge Ax:son Johnsons Stiftelse for supporting Gradients and Chain of Triggers.

 

The many festivals and venues that works created in the project has been performed at: Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik, rainy days Luxembourg, Kontinent Dalsland, Klangspuren Schwatz, Royal College of Music Stockholm, Swedish Society of Composers, Frequenz Festival Kiel, The Peggy Glanville-Hicks Composers’ House Sydney and Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival.

 

Publication channels and journals providing valuable peer review: VIS -Nordic Journal for Artistic Research, Seismograf, Arts Council Norway, The Journal for Artistic Research (JAR), Portable Gray and Ruukku.

Link to bibliography in the end of the Discussion

Context

 

Aside from the artistic backgrounds of the participants in this project, within what artistic and research contexts is my research unfolding? Despite the influence of Werktreue on performance practice since the nineteenth century, performers and composers have continued to work collaboratively. The tradition of performers working actively alongside composers is thus an artistic-historical context influencing my own professional years. However, in the musical score, the shared work of performer and composer tends to leave little trace beyond a line of dedication from the composer to the performer. Consequently, we cannot know of all the occasions where collaboration has been present in the compositional process. What follows looks at only a few performer who were known for having engaged in the creative process. Their legacy has left their personal marks on musical works.

 

            Hungarian violinist, conductor and composer Joseph Joachim (1831–1907) was one of the most significant violinists of the nineteenth century. He had a close relationship with Johannes Brahms, whose violin concerto he premiered in 1879. Joachim was an important figure on the European music scene, and his work is likely to have influenced several composers as well as other performers. A more recent example of an influential performer is Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer (b. 1947). Throughout his career, Kremer has worked alongside leading composers such as Luigi Nono, Alfred Schnittke and Sofia Gubaidulina, and he promotes contemporary music from the Baltic region by composers such as Arvo Pärt and Peteris Vasks. Another example from the same generation is American cellist and composer Frances-Marie Uitti (b. 1946), who is influencing a whole generation of cellists and composers with the new playing techniques she develops. Her practice distinguished by her collaborative work with composers including György Kurtág and Giacinto Scelsi, and she is an excellent example of an artist embodying both the practices of performer and composer.

 

            A great inspiration for me as a young violinist with a growing interest in contemporary music has been the Arditti Quartet, led by violinist Irvine Arditti. With the repertoire they commissioned and premiered, a whole new body of works for string quartet has been created. Several string quartets have followed in the Arditti Quartet’s path, all dedicated to working closely with composers. As a student, eager to expand my horizons beyond the contemporary music scene in Stockholm, I travelled to the Darmstadt Summer Courses in Germany to study with skilled performers like Irvine Arditti, who were dedicating their practice entirely to contemporary music. I found great inspiration in the accuracy and attention to detail that those musicians employed. The score, as a guide to accessing the intentions of the composer, was treated with great respect, and it seemed to be approached in a ‘faithful’ way, with great pride in the abilities of the skilled performer. Those experiences influenced my practice as a young violinist and to a certain degree formed my attitude toward the score. I regarded my mission as that of breathing life into new scores, and I sought to become a virtuosic, accurate and faithful servant of the composer and work.

 

            Throughout the fellowship period of my artistic research, new contexts have emerged. Engaging with accounts of artistic research, especially, but also of musicology, became an important part of my practice. I have read about other performer-researchers who are experimenting with their practices, developing models for shared work and becoming increasingly creative. I have connected my research to a movement in the field of contemporary music that is reviewing established structures.

 

            In her artistic research thesis Rethinking the performer: towards a devising performance practice (2018), from the Norwegian Academy of Music, percussionist Jennifer Torrence rethinks her role as a percussionist and performer. Just as I do, Torrence explores different ways of working with composers and she describes her level of involvement in the compositional process on a scale ranging between the more passive interpreter, via the adviser to the active deviser. She straightforwardly asks – what is a performer for? (Torrence 2018) Torrence tries to answer her question through a number of collaborative case studies, and topics of trust and ownership also arise in her research. Torrence’s way of developing a model with the performer in the centre has inspired me in my work with the artistic palette. Her model situates the performer in relation to a composer and compositional process. The artistic palette on the other hand captures performer creativity beyond the context of shared compositional work. 

In her PhD dissertation A holistic view of the creative potential of performance practice in contemporary music(2013), violinist Barbara Lüneburg explores the creative potential of the performer in the many activities constituting a performer practice. She includes curatorial and collaborative tasks, as well as the act of playing and performing in concert. She describes performance practice as a social creation that is embedded in society, and she discusses a number of case studies in which she has participated. Lüneburg further creates her own definition of collaboration. The holistic take on performer creativity offered by Lüneburg, in which the many diverse activities of a performer practice are highlighted, resonates with the idea of the skills and abilities of the artistic palette that I have developed. I read Lüneburg’s work as an attempt to empower performers through the act of highlighting all the skills that constitute a performer practice that rarely are being thought of as we think of the musical work as result.

 

Guitarist Stefan Östersjö has produced several accounts of his interactions with composers over the years. In his PhD thesis 'SHUT UP ’N’ PLAY! Negotiating the musical work (2008), Östersjö discusses the impact of the work conceptand analyses the identity of the musical work as the result of interaction between multiple agents: composer, performer, instrument, score and electronics, among others. Östersjö proposes a holistic view of the musical work, highlighting the involvement not only of the performer but of agents such as the instrument, electronics and musical notation. This view has inspired my own research, in which agents such as the particular tuning of my violin and the use of electronics have played an important role in my interactions with composers. Further, more philosophical agents like the Arctic ice in the compositional process of creating Solastalgia and the presence of the more-than-human in the storytelling surrounding the shared work with Liza Lim, represent agents that contribute to the creative processes.

 

Several recent accounts of research on performance practice target performer creativity, expanding practices and the negotiation of hierarchies in the ecosystem of composer–performer–work. In The polyphonic performer, cellist and researcher Tanja Orning challenges the notion of Werkreue through her practice of contemporary works and argues that the instrumental practice (and consequently the performers practice) is immanent in the work-concept (Orning, 2014). Barbara Lüneburg further explores the concept of ‘charisma’ in the performer’s role. Charisma is sensed as authenticity and truthfulness, Lünerburg writes, and a performer’s charisma is one of the factors that can create a concert aura as well as a bond between performer and audience (Lüneburg, 2013, p. 72). I see the concept of a performer’s charisma as connected to the skillabilities of the artistic palette. Pianist and curator Heloisa Amaral explores a reconfiguration of the performance environment through her concept of ‘metaxical amplification’. Challenging traditional notions of musical interpretation within a work-centred performance culture, Amaral’s research explores her emerging expanded performance practice in which musical interpretation, improvisation, and curatorial thinking are tightly interwoven. Just as my portfolio explores the embodied knowledge of the performer, cellist Marianne Baudouin Lie (2017) writes about embodied knowing in her performance practice and methods of reaching an intensified presence in the act of performing. The role of the performer’s body is explored in the research of accordionist Andreas Borregaard (2023), focusing on how the body is activated when a new emerging repertoire uses the performer’s body in ways not connected to playing their instrument. This is connected to how the different mindsets of the artistic palette are explored. Pianist Ellen Kristine Ugelvik (2018) writes about her role as a piano soloist in contemporary piano concerti. She reflections on how she was unprepared from her classical education for the demanding process of embodying new aesthetics. This resonates with my thoughts on how the conservatoire tradition focused on fostering me as a faithful performer within a classical performers’ role that did not encompass improvisation or composition. Ugelvik explores what new abilities she needs to develop and what the effects of an expanded role are on relationships and hierarchies. Pianist Ingfrid Breie Nyhus (2017) writes about traditions at play in her performance practice, exploring the field of tension between the classical and folk tradition that she, like me, embodies.

 

These examples of artistic research conducted by fellow performers, along with several others, have influenced my own research on many levels. Together, they constitute the research context in which my own research is situated and to which it contributes. Several thoughts overlap in our respective attempts to develop our practices. I see my artistic research as a sister-project to the above-mentioned research. It builds on previous research, ideas and concepts, and is based on my experiences, my background and my artistic context.


          However, ‘Transforming with the Artistic Palette’ is unique in its construction of the concept of the artistic palette, conceptualizing the specific skills and abilities that constitute my creativity as a performer. The artistic palette is a new, empowering concept that can be used as a tool for the transformation of one’s practice. It explores performer creativity in a dynamic, poetic, embodied, multidimensional, relational, situated and specific way. Further, each case study of this project develops new research findings that are being described in research for the first time. This reflection of my research contributes with insight and knowledge constructed through six case studies including my own composition. Those case studies provide practical as well as philosophical approaches for collaborative work. Focus is on the role of the performer in the compositional process, embodied knowledge as a resource, new ownership models, shared idea-generation and decision-making and to how skills and abilities develop.

 

Theory and concepts

 

In this portfolio I engage with theoretical sources in order to highlight specific aspects of the case studies. During the project, a few specific concepts and models of shared work have been particularly influential and have formed an overarching framework in which to analyse the different processes. Goehr’s concept of Werktreue holds a central position in my project. As a concept, it explains how my contemporary practice as a performer of Western art music relates to the development of compositional and performative practices over the past 300 years.

 

            Another key influence on my work that has followed me over the course of the project is the model that musicologist and composer Alan Taylor (2016) has developed to analyse types of shared imaginative working. Taylor categorizes shared work into Hierarchical, Co-operative, Consultative and Collaborative working, based on the ways ideas are shared (See Figure 1).

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