Transforming with the Artistic Palette

Karin Emilia Hellqvist

Transforming with the Artistic Palette ‘Transforming with the Artistic Palette’ is my PhD project in artistic research, a practice-led exploration of performer creativity, agency and collaborative composition, carried out at the Norwegian Academy of Music in the years 2018–2024. The central idea of the project is the conceptualization of the artistic palette. The artistic palette comprises the skills and abilities I use in creative work (skillabilities). It develops with the creative work I engage in and is active in imaginative as well as evaluative processes. The artistic palette has been explored in collaborative work with five composers as well as in an own composition. I have explored it as a multidimensional concept, comprising embodied, contextual, relational and intuitive dimensions. By engaging with the artistic palette, new sonic materials and work methods have been created and I have shared compositional processes as a co-composer. It is a poetic and dynamic concept that keep developing with my experiences. By using my artistic palette in shared work, I have explored and expanded my creativity as a performer of contemporary classical music. The five composers involved in the project come from a diverse background of styles, aesthetics and compositional approaches, as minimalistic music, improvisation and music theatre. Some of the creative partnerships build on previous work together. The works created in the project are Gradients (2023) by Karin Hellqvist and Henrik Strindberg, Solastalgia (2022) by Carola Bauckholt and Karin Hellqvist, One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) (2021–22) by Liza Lim with Karin Hellqvist, Eiksmarka Omland (2024) by Christian Wallumrød and Karin Hellqvist, Pango (2021–24) by Karin Hellqvist and Chain of Triggers (2024) by Manos Tsangaris and Karin Hellqvist. Through the artistic processes undertaken in this project, I have experienced a transformation of my performer’s role into an increasingly creative one. From seeing myself as a faithful performer of works, I have come to view myself as a creating artist involved in the whole lifecycle of the works I perform and co-compose. By exploring the artistic palette in shared work, thoughts about connection, identity, responsibility, empowerment, complementarity, taste, ownership and transformation has come to the fore in my practice. Those topics are discussed across the works created in the project. The methodology of the project is rooted in the specific forms of collaborative composition it comprises; engaging in improvisation, developing technological skills, accessing embodied performance materials, engaging in interdisciplinary work with a printed publication and developing connection through cyclical patterns of work where materials are circulated between participants. A curatorial process of selecting material for research has along with text writing, peer-review and publication processes been important research methods of the project. The structure of this reflection is a compilation of six case studies wrapped with an introduction and a closing discussion. The reflection has been created over the course of the project and includes four already published articles. The project is situated in a broad artistic- and research field with connections to other collaborating performers and composers, artist researchers who develop their performance practices, historical composer-performer collaborations and the rich artistic contexts of the involved artists. I draw on theories of collaborative composition (Taylor, Lim, Östersjö, John-Steiner), Werktreue (Goehr), embodied knowledge (Merleau-Ponty, Lüneburg), eco-anxiety (Albrecht) and identity (Hargreaves, Markus & Nurius).

Artistic palette

Empowerment and freedom

I will unfold the artistic palette as transformative resource in the light of some central concepts of my research: empowerment and freedom, embodied knowledge and imagination.

In the context of my work, being empowered has meant not only being skilled to pursue creative activities, and claiming ownership of what is being created, but also enjoying the freedom to develop an expanded practice. In my classical performer’s role prior to this project, skills and abilities were primarily linked to the act of performing my instrument: mastering playing techniques, studying repertoire, interpreting scores and creating musical meaning in the concert situation. In developing my artistic palette, I have been challenged to review the abilities that my established practice can encompass. I have found the freedom to engage with a broader set of skills and abilities, and this has encouraged me to think creatively in new ways, without being limited by my idea of what skills a conventional classical performers role would include.

In the introduction to this portfolio, I discussed how the artistic palette has empowered me in my creative work, and also how the act of acknowledging myself as an artist with an artistic palette has created a sense of empowerment. Being aware of my skillabilities and making others aware of them, has empowered me to continue developing them further and to develop new ones as needed in creative work. This process has further been interlinked with the imagination of future selves. Over the course of the project, my skillabilities have become more identifiable to me and, by framing them with a concept, I have been able to communicate them in new ways.

I have been empowered to develop creative skills in all dimensions of the artistic palette. I have been working with audio recording and editing, which has enabled me to take on a compositional role in for example the work on Solastalgia. I have also developed a verbal language around my embodied knowledge and way of communicating it through suggestions and performance, as I did when working on One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin). When engaged in the work on Gradients, my personal way of performing was the main focus, and I was empowered to share, discuss, develop and value those skillabilities. In Chain of Triggers, it was empowering that the material we worked with was our personal histories, lives, experiences and thoughts. Our roles as composer and performer were set aside during the game of Chain of Triggers; the focus was instead on sharing and building connection and trust. Composing Eiksmarka Omland, I found myself empowered by the experience I had of working with technology and being able to construct sketches and drafts with the materials we had recorded. I was empowered by contributing with skillabilities for the developing work methods. Lastly, composing Pango expanded, even erased, the boundaries of my performer’s role, as I engaged in the composition of my own work. I enjoyed the freedom of entering the role of the ‘sole’ composer.

Using those concrete skillabilities of my artistic palette in creative work, has shifted my view of creativity from something predominantly centred around works and the compositional process of a composer, to something that is centred around me as a creating, skilled performer. The focus during the compositional process has been drawn to my artistic palette and its interaction with the collaborator’s palette. The skillabilities I have developed have given me opportunities to participate in the compositional process. Thus, I have been empowered to be active rather than passive when it comes to the development of my repertoire. Step by step, the artistic palette has grown in all its dimensions as I have developed new skillabilities.

Speaking up for my skillabilities and actively using them has not always been easy. But by patiently continuing to practice awareness and active use of the artistic palette, I have developed the abilities to engage and to take responsibility. Thus, this research project exemplifies how freedom and empowerment can grow out of engagement with the artistic palette, creating an expanded practice and increased involvement in artistic processes.

The body and embodied knowledge

Research on embodiment is a vast field, and a mapping of it is out of the scope of this project. In the case study about One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin), I refer to embodied knowledge as introduced by phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty. According to Merleau-Ponty, embodied knowledge describes a kind of knowledge in which the body knows how to act and is also the knowing subject (Merleau-Ponty, 1945). Embodied knowledge resides in the body, and, as philosopher Shigenori Nagatomo (1992) argues, it is also acquired through the body. Following the notion of embodied knowledge, Michael Polanyi explored the term ‘tacit knowledge’, comprising knowledge residing in our bodies that we cannot always articulate verbally (Polanyi, 1966), such as riding a bike or playing the violin.

The artistic palette embraces my physical and mental skillabilities, and therefore it is connected to my body. In the case study One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin), I have described in depth how the embodied knowledge connected to my engagement with traditional Swedish folk music is explored and woven into the work. The work makes use of such embodied skillabilities as ornamentation and the mindset of the polska. During my work with Liza, I was suggesting-by-doing – I made compositional suggestions not with words, but through the act of playing. This is in line with Donald Schön’s concept of reflection-in-action, or thinking-on-our-feet, a central concept in practice-research that stresses the role of reflection in learning processes. Through cycles of reflection and practice, professionals can reshape activities and situations as they unfold (Schön, 1983). Suggesting-by-doing can further be linked to the related concept of Stefan Östersjö’s concept of thinking-through-practice, a nonverbal process of musical interpretation (Clarke et al., 2017, p. 123). Thinking-through-practice is described as ‘a kind of thinking that involves the physical interaction between a performer and his or her instrument and the listening of the composer, both of which are modes of thinking that do not involve verbalization’ (Clarke et al., 2017, p. 123). Similarly, my suggesting-by-doing has been a way to participate in compositional idea-generation connected to embodied knowledge through my engagement with the instrument. While the composer in most cases communicates verbally in the workshop situation, by suggesting ways to try out and develop new materials through playing, I do not have to verbalize my suggestions. This process of doing also includes instant evaluation, a way of searching for and suggesting elements, sonic colours or phrasings that I consider works.

Another awareness of the body developed during the work on One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin). I have outlined how I enter a certain embodied mindset by playing the Swedish polska dance. I have called it a body-mindset. This body-mindset is a part of the embodied dimension of the artistic palette and is evoked by engaging with the polska and it has physical and mental effects. The pulse of the polska runs through my body. My feet tap the rhythm and ornamentation is unfolding on a pre-reflective level. My breathing adjusts to the polska and I sense a certain presence.

In the work with Carola Bauckholt on Solastalgia, my evolving mapping practice was to a large extent connected to my embodied knowledge. By listening to the sound of the Arctic ice and creating sounding responses on my violin, I connected to pre-reflective patterns of performance. In the act of mapping, the sounding outcome was not central. Through my headphones, I did not even hear properly what I played. My attention was entirely directed toward the sound of the ice. My body reacted via the violin as a familiar, embodied agent, an extension of the body. This process is discussed in depth in the case study about Solastalgia. In the work on Gradients with Henrik Strindberg, our focus has been the detailed investigation into my personal way of performing certain playing techniques. The piece is derived from a set of techniques and their potential to develop through my repeated engagement with them through the skillabilities of the embodied dimension. The techniques we explored stood in constant relation to the bodily aspects of performance. How did I play an oval bow stroke? What was my right arm’s physical limit of playing the third movement in terms of speed and dynamics? What double stops felt right in my left hand? What was for me a natural continuation of a fast upbow?

Working on Eiksmarka Omland, I have practised following the tape part, which to a large extent comprises Christian Wallumrød’s pre-recorded performance of either the single melody line or its underlying chord structure. This practice has evoked the physical feeling of trying to embody the way Christian performs. I have tried to imagine how Christian is about to phrase a line, how the keys of the grand piano feel under his fingers in a passage, trying to evoke the sunny atmosphere in the Eiksmarka Church where we recorded the tape part in June 2023. I have tried to fit my sonic materials as a jigsaw-puzzle around Christian’s performance. It has been an exercise in the embodied understanding of another body. This practice can be associated with a method designed by violinist and researcher Barbara Lüneburg (2023). In the research project undertaken with sociologist Kai Ginkel and flutist Renata Kambarova, Lüneburg investigates the instrumentalist’s body as an essential factor in musical expression, gender perception and charisma (Lüneburg, 2023). As starting point, they take the assumption that ‘the body is the medium with and through which instrumentalists realize sound and musical ideas and concurrently is the carrier and holder of emotions’ (Lüneburg, 2023, Interlude II). Through the use of artistic research methods, the team uncovers implicit embodied knowledge in instrumental practice and makes it explicit. In Lüneburg’s methods ‘a performer first interprets and documents a specific work from the classical repertoire and then re-enacts another performer’s physicality in the interpretation of the same piece’ (Lüneburg, 2023, Interlude II). When embodying the way Christian performs the melody, I try to create seamless chamber music together with a fixed medium. Unlike Lüneburg, I have not necessarily enacted the embodied pianistic gestures of his performance. Rather, I have tried to enact the body-mindset that Christian entered as he performed the melody. I have tried to enact the embodied dimension of Christian’s artistic palette.

Through my work with the different case studies in the project, I have become more conscious of my body as a site for knowledge and resource of creativity. Previously, I had a somewhat ‘mechanistic’ view of the body. My body was taught how to host my music-making – to physically perform on the violin my cognitive learning of a musical score. I did not understand the co-creative power of my embodied knowledge as I do today. Exploring my embodied knowledge has given me insight into how my body participates in my artistic decisions, based on its experience of my life. Other factors that brought me increased awareness of the body as an agent connected not only to the artistic palette but to society as a whole was the pandemic that struck in the middle of my project. The fact that during the pandemic our physical bodies needed protection from a virus that was carried by other bodies raised a range of implications for my research and artmaking, in terms of timing, the limited possibility for physical meetings and the development of new work methods. Further, I entered the fellowship as a young mother of a toddler and I am leaving it with three daughters. Few processes in life have connected me to the physical body as much as birth and parenthood. Those changes in my life, together with the embodied knowledge of the artistic palette, has given my body a more central position in my practice.

These different aspects of bodily awareness of which I have become increasingly conscious are further connected to the intuitive dimension of the artistic palette: of tuning in to my taste and preferences, of sensing the polska in my body, of using my body to suggest creative work paths and of embodying the performance of another performer. In addition to the increased focus on body that my engagement with the artistic palette has given me, as I think with the artistic palette, something happens in my body too. It becomes more relaxed and confident. I perceive the space in which I am situated as an allowing, open space. Even the way I breathe changes. During the project, I come to see my body as increasingly important in creative work and performance. I have become aware of it as a site for knowledge. I have ‘asked’ my body things. How do I perform a certain bow stroke? How does the polska feel in my body as I play it? How does my body, through the violin as its extension, respond to the sounds of the Arctic landscape? My body and mind connect. This awareness of the body has spilled over to the performance situation too. How is it different to perform by heart, and what happens in my body as the score is taken away? What happens in my body as I read a score? Having switched to the mindset of the artistic palette ever so often now, I am becoming increasingly accustomed to those bodily changes. I used to carry the perception that my practice had certain tacit borders for what was allowed or possible. This perception has been challenged. New creative space, as a physical sensation, opens.

Some of the composers I worked alongside in this project have experience of the physical act of violin playing themselves. Henrik Strindberg plays the violin and often uses his instrument to try out materials. Liza Lim has a background as a string player. Others use the violin more as an abstraction in their compositional practice, imagining the instrument, through the knowledge they have built of composing for string instruments over the years. Through this project I have brought my body, and my instrument as an extension of it, into the shared work. My body has claimed its place in the compositional process by directing attention to the physical skillabilities of my artistic palette. My instrument has been present as we have engaged in try-out in workshop situations. It has acted as a non-human embodied extension of my human body. Clarke and his colleagues suggest that this sensation of the relation between instrument and performer is as if the instrument is a ‘transparent extension (prostheses) of the body’ (Clarke et al., 2017, p. 132). The feeling of the skillabilities residing in my body with its extension of the violin as conceptual starting point as well as method, has created a sense of embodied connection to the musical work and the process.

Imagination

As an important ability of the artistic palette, imagination has been a central concept during the course of the research project. In fact, the whole process started with my imagined expanded role and practice: I felt there must be ways to contribute more actively to the creative process, and this sparked a line of imagined scenarios of future situations. Little by little, some of those scenarios took shape and were tried out in practice. New abilities developed as I acted out those new scenarios, and empowerment emerged as my repertoire of skillabilities expanded.

My imagination has enabled me to form mental images of my future practice, identity and music-making, which can help me to navigate toward new skills and abilities. And it works the other way around as well: when I imagine new skillabilities, future identities can develop. Thus, imagination is a core ability of the artistic palette. I see it as primarily situated in the intuitive dimension. However, the ability to imagine is also active in contextual, embodied and relational activities as well. It facilitates images of future work as well as what Markus and Nurius (1986) call ‘future possible selves’. Their description of ‘possible selves’ resonates with me:

An individual’s repertoire of possible selves can be viewed as the cognitive manifestation of enduring goals, aspirations, motives, fears, and threats. Possible selves provide the specific self-relevant form, meaning, organization, and direction to these dynamics. As such, they provide the essential link between the self-concept and motivation. (Markus & Nurius, 1986, p. 954)

They further point out that even though we as individuals are free to create any possible selves we wish to, a number of factors impact what pictures our imagination creates:

An individual is free to create any variety of possible selves, yet the pool of possible selves derives from the categories made salient by the individual’s particular sociocultural and historical context and from the models, images, and symbols provided by the media and by the individual’s immediate social experiences. Possible selves thus have the potential to reveal the inventive and constructive nature of the self but they also reflect the extent to which the self is socially determined and constrained. (Markus & Nurius, 1986, p. 954)

As a recent graduate performer of contemporary classical music, what was holding back my imagination of an expanded practice? My education in the conservatoire system provided me with solid competence of interpretation, technical skills and musicianship in line with the classical performer’s role. Yet, when I graduated, my repertoire of possible future selves was not very broad. It took me many years to collect a substantial gallery of role models who had created practices that departed from the trajectory of the classical musician. As I started to form pictures in my mind of future selves, I further understood Markus & Nurius’s assertion that ‘possible selves are views of the self that often have not been verified or confirmed by social experience’ (Markus & Nurius, 1986, p. 955). I had limited social experience or confirmation of a possible expanded performer’s role. It is my hope that the concept of the artistic palette will become an educational resource with the potential to guide students toward possible future selves and the skillabilities needed in those roles.

In ‘Transforming with the Artistic Palette’, I have used my imagination to create a vision of an expanded performer’s role. But imagination plays a much bigger role in the project than that; it runs as a common thread throughout the project. In Taylor’s model of shared imaginative working (Taylor, 2016), imagination and evaluation are the two core processes that determine whether shared work is classified as Hierarchical, Co-operative, Consultative or Collaborative working. During the project, I have learnt that imagination – as part of the contextual dimension in artistic work – is an ability that needs training. I have had to practice projecting artistic ideas into the future in discussions around form with Henrik Strindberg on Gradients. During the work on Eiksmarka Omland together with Christian Wallumrød, imagining how our decisions affected the outcome of my performance with the pre-recorded tape was essential. When composing Pango myself, I was at times forced to confront my fear of not being able to imagine artistic materials at all.

In this section, I have unfolded the artistic palette as transformative resource in the light of some central concepts of the research; empowerment and freedom, embodied knowledge and imagination. Next, I will go further into the collaborative aspects of the project.

Discussion

In ‘Transforming with the Artistic Palette’, I have posed a number of questions concerning the artistic palette and shared work:

What can the artistic palette do in my practice and how has the artistic palette 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 becoming a more creating performer?

In this portfolio, I have unfolded a number of creative processes. My engagement with my artistic palette has run through those explorations like a common thread. Through several case studies including fellow artists, I have described in detail how specific processes have unfolded. Some of those reflections have been articulated during the course of the project. In this concluding discussion I look at my research questions across the six case studies to see what new experiences and new knowledge my project has developed. I also set the stage for the new questions my research has sparked.

Structure of the discussion

Artistic palette

I begin by addressing some of the effects my engagement with the artistic palette has had on my role, my practice and my view of my own creative identity. I will discuss:

empowerment and freedom,
embodied knowledge,
imagination.

Collaboration

I then move on to the collaborative aspects of the project, discussing:

complementarity,
roles,
notation,
the intertwined concepts of connection, trust and responsibility,
decision-making and taste,
ownership.

Transformation

Finally, I elaborate further on my personal experiences of transformation in the project:

the experience of being a performing composer / composing performer,
internal and external friction,
contribution and dissemination,
new questions arising,
transformation with the artistic palette.

The musicians do not like a living author meddling with their established practice of performance preparation because performance preparation is their – the musicians’ – creative territory and not a territory for composers. While the dead status of the author (as if the composer is dead) secures room for the performer to turn a musical composition into a musical work, the problem originates from a conflict that exists between the authorship of performance and that of composition. (Kanno 2012, p. 178)

On the same note, in Mapping composer–performer collaboration, composer Elliot Gyger writes about the paradigm of different types of ownership of composition and performance:

Shared ownership of a work remains highly contentious, especially for composers. A more useful paradigm might invoke parallel ownership of two outputs – a composer’s (performance-influenced) composition and a performer’s (composer-influenced) performance – neither in principle superior to the other. (Gyger, 2014, p. 34)

I discuss below the ways in which my view of the different ownerships of the ‘Transforming with the Artistic Palette’ project has evolved. But first, I turn to the ways legal ownership and authorship, represented by the name on the score, has been dealt with in a concrete way in the different case studies of the work. Outlining how ownership is applied in the different case studies poses questions regarding how contribution and creativity in shared work is recognized and measured.

In Gradients, composed together with Henrik Strindberg, it was clear early on in the process that the shared work was of a truly collaborative nature. In May 2020, in an email conversation, Henrik mentioned for the first time that the authorship should be shared, drawing on an example from his own practice when a performer contributed substantially and was given royalty for the contributions she had made to the composition. When the score of Gradients was ready in the summer of 2023, Henrik sent it to Svensk Musik, a subsidiary to the Swedish organization of copyright protected music, in charge of depositing, purchase and hire Swedish music. We again discussed the distribution of legal ownership and found a division of 50–50 to be fitting for the contributions we had made.

Solastalgia is another example of a composition in the project where ownership is shared evenly between the two composers: Carola Bauckholt and me. This division grew naturally out of our collaborative work process. Separated by the pandemic, I had been creating the building blocks of the work, the mappings of the sound of the Arctic ice, but in close dialogue with Carola. Carola at times mentioned that she regarded the work to be perhaps even more created by me. However, I found Carola’s skills in developing form and dramaturgy as very important in the following process of creating the timeline of the mappings. We registered 50 per cent each in GEMA (Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte) and STIM (Svenska Tonsättares Internationella Musikbyrå), our respective copyright organizations.

With Christian Wallumrød, the work on Eiksmarka Omland did not encompass the same equal contributions as Gradients and Solastalgia. As described in the case study, Christian and I did not perceive the contributions to the work as shared equally in terms of author and ownership. The melody composed by Christian had ended up as a substantial part of the work. Nor did the solution that Christian alone would own the work feel suitable. The solution to the problem that I suggested to Christian was that the score would bear the name of both of us as composers while the legal ownership was shared 70 per cent Wallumrød to 30 per cent Hellqvist. Christian agreed, and we had found a compromise between how the work and score communicated its distributed process and how financial remuneration was distributed according to the weight of the contributions.

One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) by Liza Lim with Karin Hellqvist is the only piece in the project where authorship and legal ownership are not shared. As described in the case study At the knot of presence (Hellqvist, Forthcoming b), this was in the end of the process also something I felt the need to ask Liza about, as we had not spoken about ownership during the work process. I felt that the shared work that we had engaged in had in many ways influenced the identity and nature of the work. On the other hand, in the conventional manner as the task of the composer, Liza had notated the score and thus, she stands as the sole author and owner of it. This complex case study started me thinking about ownership as distributed. As elaborated on in the case study, the artistic author- and ownership I experienced toward the work was divided between the ownership of the performance and ownership of the score. Distinguishing between the musical work and the score, Kanno (2012, p. 171) writes:

It is important to stress at this point that the musical work is not a product of the composer (in contrast to the score which is a product – as well as the property – of the composer). The musical work is what is created upon repeated performances of a score, and the production of the identity of a musical work is a complex social process comprising many different kinds of contribution.

In the case of One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin), I did not feel that I wanted to, or could, claim ownership of the score. I felt that the notation was Liza’s domain, and I also understood very well the ownership she felt towards it. The score of the work is an artwork in itself. However, at the same time, I felt that my contribution in the process was not as visible as I would have wished in, for example, a concert programme, where the audience would see only Liza’s name. As Kanno suggests, the identity of this musical work was highly complex. In May 2024, as I was assembling my portfolio, I asked Liza whether she would consider communicating the ownership of One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) as ‘Liza Lim with Karin Hellqvist’. She was happy with the suggestion and we had found a way to allow also a short description of the work’s authorship reflect that shared work had been present.

Chain of Triggers is not a musical work but a publication. The material the booklet comprises is selected documentation of the Chain of Triggers, a game-like exercise in which Manos Tsangaris and I engaged over two months in 2020. Manos and I both contributed with a small piece of personal material a day to a growing selection of materials. This exercise was a way of getting to know each other. It was not something we originally intended to publish. Our contributions to the exercise are explicitly equal and thus, division of ownership between the two of us has not been an issue.

In collaborative work, the level of interaction within each individual collaboration determines whether legal author- and ownership should be communicated as shared. If the work is substantially shared, but not to the extent that the performer is equally involved in creating the score, how then can the contribution of the performer in distributed work be made clearer? In this project, I have challenged the notated score to embrace new ways to express mycelial, shared, distributed, co-operative or consultative ways of working. What about:

Lydia Goehr (1992, p. 208) describes how composers after Beethoven ‘enjoyed describing themselves and each other as divinely inspired creators – even as God-like – whose sole task was to objectify in music something unique and personal and to express something transcendent’. The concept of Werktreue captures the idea of the sole composer-genius with the ‘authority to express “higher truths”’ (Goehr, 1992, p. 209). No composer I ever worked with would call themselves God-like, of course. And few composers today would claim that their compositional work unfolds unaffected by their environment as an isolated process. This romantic notion has no context in our present-day practices. But the way that ownership of musical works is structured today as well as the traditional roles of composer and performer to some extent build on connected ideas and structures from the nineteenth century. Ownership of musical works is connected to prestige, privilege and money. As a composer, one source of income can potentially be the money from royalties, and in the challenging reality in which contemporary composers seek to earn a living, it is understandable that there may be a desire to preserve the present model of sole ownership. Performers who claim their share in authorship and ownership threaten an already delicate the status quo.

In this project, it has sometimes been difficult for me to raise the question of ownership. Despite the trust, connection and responsibility I have felt developing in the creative partnerships, I have felt uneasy bringing ownership up for discussion. This is not necessarily because of any impression I’ve got from these particular composers, nor is it because I am afraid of what they might say. The very act of speaking up for the contributions I consider myself to have made has been the most difficult part. Previously, I was not used to bringing focus to my contributions and I was also not used to contributing as much as I have done in this project. In this project, I have at times been afraid of creating a difficult situation for the composers, who are also my good friends after years of work together. What if they do not agree to shared ownership but cannot voice their doubt because they feel observed by the framework of research? Perhaps I have been afraid that if I start claiming ownership, they will not want to work collaboratively anymore, because it challenges their privileges. Would they feel somehow challenged by me as a performer, claiming my share of the musical work?

Pianist Sarah Nicolls writes about her experiences of collaboration, describing how the hierarchy between composer and performer as well as the roles inherited from the classical music education has implications on the potential of sharing creative work:

it is really hard collaborating; it doesn’t come off every time and it’s a lot about personalities. The composer has to be willing to work with others, and that is not necessarily taught as a part of composition – the willingness to share. Somehow it seems more testing for the composer because of the classical music hierarchy; it is always composers who are above performers. So because of that hierarchy, the composers have more to lose. They are giving away their land and the performers are gaining land. In the same way, it can be hard for performers to take ownership. It was only about two years ago that I started to be bold enough to say ‘This pieces is by X and Nicholls’, because it is a huge statement when the performer goes into the ‘writing zone’. (Nicholls, 2017, p. 115)

Nicholls’s testimony to the years it took before she could dare challenge the perceived hierarchies, resonates with my experience in this project. Even with the warm and generous atmosphere found in all partnerships of the project, I have had to mobilize the courage to dare to take on responsibility and ownership in my expanding role.

Clarke and his colleagues close their reflection on the joint work of Gorton and Östersjö on Forlorn Hope with the following words:

In the end, what polices the boundaries between composition, improvisation and performance are dynamically changing and historically and geographically specific cultural conventions, held in place by a range of ‘interests’ from the law and copyright to people’s sense of their own identity. Collaborative creative projects such as the one discussed in this chapter may do little to shift or break those boundaries in any dramatic manner; but in the more implicit and procedural ways they help to carry forward the long process of dismantling the still persistent myth of the autonomous-genius composer and his or her helpful and accommodating interpreter-performer. (Clarke et al., 2017, p. 134)

In this research project, the boundaries and hierarchies of my relationships with the participant artist-composers have been challenged – in the negotiation of my identity and role, by problematizing ownership and by illuminating creativity in my artistic palette. Mark Doffman and Jean-Philippe Calvin (2017) suggest that within the existing system of compositional dominance over performance, we might approach something like a ‘collaborative turn’. Testimonies to collaborative creative work such as the one described by Clarke and colleagues, as well as my own project can fuel the movement toward a collaborative turn within contemporary classical music.

In this section, I have discussed some collaborative aspects of the project. I have touched on complementarity, roles, the role of notation, the concepts of connection, trust and responsibility as well as on decision-making and taste. Lastly, I have described how ownership has emerged as a central concept of the research. I turn now to my experience of personal transformation in the project. I will discuss how my engagement with the artistic palette has transformed my practice towards becoming a more creating performer.

Composer X, together with performer Y?

Composer X, through a shared process with performer Y?

Composer X, composition and performer Y, idea and creative contribution?

Composer X, with tribute to performer Y?

Composer X, devised with performer Y?

Composer X, with the artistic palette of performer Y?

One further interesting aspect of ownership – one that Christian Wallumrød and I discussed – arose in the case study about Eiksmarka Omland. During my research, besides the distributed view of ownership, I have developed an increasingly process-oriented view of author- and ownership. Less and less do I see the score as the end product and stand-alone result. Even if my contributions – whether they are suggestion-by-doing, participation in discussions, responsibility for applications and finances, sharing of performance techniques, or filtering of what I like and not – do not appear in the score in visible form, they have been part of the compositional process, and they are likely to have been important for the development of the music. Like the Liza Lim’s mycelial threads, this meshwork of shared process is what constructs the world of the work; the score itself is only one of many aspects of this world.

Discussing composer Florence Baschet’s work with the French Danel Quartet, musicologist Nicholas Donin points out how those ‘hidden’ contributions to the process, made by other agents than the composer, play an important role in shaping the identity of the work.

During the genesis of StreicherKreis, various kinds of creative contribution by members of the project were directed toward (or solicited by) the composer, only to be rejected in the end – as in my own suggestion of a ‘better title’. The compositional process would not have been the same had those unexpected suggestions not forced Baschet to decide on her conception of the piece. Confirmation through resistance – and the increased confidence in earlier choices that it generates for the composer – shapes the work no less collectively than the more obvious models of co-creation and co-editing. Along with the ‘positive’ model of multiple contributions, its ‘negative’ counterpart is a significant force in the collective shaping of the work, although one that, in most cases, leaves little trace. (Donin 2017, p. 76)

Donin’s view reflects the mycelial meshwork of contributions surrounding the work, whether they end up visible in the score or not. The skillabilities of providing input, inspiration, resistance and being open for discussion are important contributions to the shared creative process I have practiced in this project.

It is worth noticing that in the two collaborations where the contribution was finally considered equal between me and the composer, were both proceeded by previous collaboration on solo pieces and an already established working relationship and friendship. Solastalgia and Gradients can both be seen as continuations of already established working partnerships. The works that preceded them – Doppelbelichtung (Bauckholt, 2016) and Femte strängen (Strindberg, 2009) – were both created for me and partly with me through several workshops and different kinds of exchange. In terms of personal chemistry and mutual interest, it was then easy for me to see how the shared work with Carola Bauckholt and Henrik Strindberg could develop further. John-Steiner writes about how ‘the extent to which collaboration results in transformative contributions depends on many factors: the shared vision and purpose of the partners, their talent and perseverance, and their timing’ (John-Steiner, 2000, p. 9). With experiences of shared work together, albeit more conventional in its structure, the stage had already been set for more comprehensive forms of joint work on Gradients and Solastalgia.

Challenging roles

As I have focused my research on this overlap and complementarity between the practices of composers and myself as a performer, am I at risk of instead reinforcing the roles I want to see less emphasized? A senior researcher once suggested I should consider simply discarding the labels of ‘composer’ and ‘performer’. This is an interesting idea. In fact, one of the outcomes of my research is my tendency to see myself and my collaborators more as equal artists with unique competences than confined in the box of ‘composer’ and ‘performer’. However, I previously strongly identified as a classical performer and was not yet ready to consider myself as being a creating artist or composer. My practice was embedded in the field of contemporary western art music that is structured around musical works and their performance by faithful interpreters. On their account of David Gorton’s guitar work Forlorn Hope (Gorton, 2012), written for and with Stefan Östersjö, the researchers and practitioners Eric F. Clarke, Mark Doffman, David Gorton and Stefan Östersjö write:

In the creative economy of contemporary western musical production, the defined roles of composer and performer remain powerfully embedded, despite indications from academic writing and the statements of practitioners that this division of creative labour is increasingly regarded as highly porous. (Clarke et al., 2017, p. 116)

This is how I used to experience the roles of performer and composer as powerfully embedded in my practice. Over the course if the ‘Transforming with the Artistic Palette’ project, I see how those roles become increasingly porous and at instances more or less dissolved.

From childhood, I embodied a tradition of Swedish folk music. However, at the outset of the project, I did not consider it to be an important and vital part of my practice. I had not yet explored it as an explicit creative and embodied resource. The transformation toward viewing myself as an artist with creative possibilities beyond my violin performance of works took time. I needed to develop understanding of the historical perspective my performer’s role carry. Further, the transformational process was connected to risk – I did not know how my research experiment would turn out.

In this project, I do not attempt to diminish the value of the skillabilities that a composer would gain from years of training: imagining musical materials, evaluating them, structuring them in a form and communication them through musical notation. My experience in this project has rather led me to challenge any assumption that those activities are to be undertaken by the composer more or less alone. I know that for some people, this is an ambiguous exercise. To change a ‘typical’ composer’s practice situated in Western art music, in this project, I suggest considering sharing idea-generation and decision-making with me as a performer. How this challenge is received is then unique to each individual. I suggest that this sharing potentially can be a gift, creating value as connection, knowledge exchange, trust and new kinds of art. However, I understand that it could as well be seen as a way of reducing privileges and creative freedom and compromising the benefits of sole ownership. Through accounts of how practices in the field of contemporary classical music change, we can see how the roles of composers and performers alike transform. Detailed research into how the role of the composer transforms through such an experiment as this, is a path for further investigation.

My research has shown me that by creating a greater overlap between the practices of performer and composer, new knowledge can be created as well as new kinds of musical works and other kinds of social interactions. My research is perhaps not the fiercest rebellion against established structures, hierarchies and roles. It would be unrealistic for me to think I would emerge from this research project entirely free of the labels of performer and composer to help understand the music world. However, I have shown myself that I can be creative to different degrees on the collaborative scale. Through artmaking and experimentation, I have challenged the hierarchy and my role in my own way. The alternatives that have emerged have been beneficial for me as a performer in many ways, and I dare say they have been fruitful for the composers as well. An increasing number of empirical experiments like this could lead to a reduction of the importance of the roles of composer and performer in favour of equal artists with specific competences. This would in turn affect and perhaps redraw guidelines for institutional support such as commission fees, as well as fuelling the discourse around ownership in the field of contemporary classical music.

Decision-making and taste

How has my perspective on decision-making developed during the research? In approaching this question I find Alan Taylor’s typology of working relationships helpful (Taylor, 2016). Taylor’s two key questions relate to the degree to which the imaginative and the evaluative processes of the creative work are shared. It is in the evaluative processes that much of the decision-making surrounding new works takes place. But I have found it easier to participate actively in the imaginative processes, perhaps because imagination has evolved as a key concept of my artistic palette. This is not surprising; after all, imagining timbre, gesture, dynamics and expression is closely linked to performance practice in general – a domain I regularly explore. Imaginative activities in form-related questions have been more challenging and have required more time and thought. This is also conventionally the domain of the composer.

On the other hand, decision-making in the compositional process is a new skillability I have developed in the course of this project. Decision-making abilities can be connected to all the dimensions of the artistic palette depending on their nature. In the creative work of the case studies, I have especially noticed that I become hesitant when faced with making decisions connected to structure, form and evaluation of the artistic potential of sonic elements to be included or not. Those abilities are especially linked to the contextual dimension of the artistic palette. In those situations, I have been very alert to and aware of what my collaborator seems to like or prefer. Often, I have also been influenced by it. In the case study of Solastalgia, I have described how my verbal language changed as Carola created the space for me to take artistic decisions and actively sought my opinions. I hesitated, reluctant to give a clear answer. Why do I hesitate when I am finally given the chance to participate in the decision-making around the works? Would this not be the perfect moment to express my thoughts and desires for the music?

I have come to understand artistic decision-making as a muscle that needs training. Making artistic compositional decisions is a process of connecting to one’s own taste and preferences. In the initial phases of the work, this ability was not well trained in my practice. Comparing how easily and effortlessly I could connect to evaluation of performative aspects, when it came to compositional decisions it was quite on the contrary. I needed time to think and to consider different alternatives. What did I actually think? And why? Was it my own artistic opinion or was I influenced by what I thought others liked? Over the course of the project, my compositional-decision muscle got in increasingly better shape. During the final phases of composing Gradients in 2023, this transformation became tangible. In 2020, Henrik suggested we both make a form sketch each for the still budding work. This process was completely new for me and required quite some thought. Toward the end of the compositional work though, I engaged a lot more easily in form related issues; I was more tuned in to my preferences and able to speak out for them. In the safe space that had established between us over the years, I felt encouraged to speak up for my ideas. With the trust I had in Henrik, and the interest he showed in my competence, I was able to train my ability to connect to my taste as well as developing the courage to speak up for it. Similarly, during all the case studies, various parallel positive processes of empowerment have reinforced each other.

Decision making is a complex process and it is not always easily summarized. Taylor’s model suggests that decision-making is either shared or not – a somewhat stark binary choice. But the reality in shared creative work is much more complex, and a working partnership might host a fluctuating approach to decision making. This is something that Taylor also points out (2016, p. 569). Looking back at the decisions made in the project, I can think of few straightforward ones – ‘should we use it or not?’. Rather, processes of negotiation, discussion and try-out have finally crystalized in some kind of answer; with a mutual satisfaction in the result, or a compromise.

New models of ownership: Toward a ‘collaborative turn’

As outlined in the introduction to this portfolio, the field of contemporary classical music is in a state of transformation, in which new creative practices are challenging the prevailing structures and roles. We see performers negotiating their creative space within the compositional process and composing their own works, composers performing their own works, and collectives of performer-composers writing music together, as well as the influence of other musical genres and art on the increasingly porous structures in the field. New approaches to educating performer-composers are being introduced at conservatoires throughout Europe. An example is CoPeCo, Contemporary Performance and Composition, a master’s programme where a group of performer-composers share their time between the conservatories in Stockholm, Lyon, Hamburg and Tallinn. Examples of new kinds of dynamic ensemble formations are the collective Ensemble Pamplemousse, the new music ensemble soundinitiative, the Norwegian duo Vilde & Inga, the Berlin-based collective Femmes Savantes, and the Oslo-based ensemble neoN to which I belong.

In the ‘Transforming with the Artistic Palette’ project, ownership has emerged as a central concept connected to the artistic palette. The project has dealt with ownership from the first attempts to conceptualize how personal sonic elements were connected to me to the shared legal and artistic ownership of finished co-composed works. As explored in the case studies of the project, all pieces in the framework of my research have been composed through processes of shared work. Intertwining ideas, cyclical work methods, definitions of collaboration, distributed creativity and joint work – what Liza Lim has called mycelial threads – have been explored. When creativity is explicitly distributed between composer and performer, a result the established models of owner and authorship become problematized. Further, if creative work is a collective enterprise, what happens to the ownership of works created through such shared processes? And what do I mean with ownership?

Mieko Kanno writes:

Composer–performer collaboration is often seen as something new in Western classical music though there are precedents throughout history. I suggest that the crucial element to its success is the idea of shared ownership. Composer–performer collaboration works well when the two individuals come out of their respective creativity niches and become ‘musicians’ to share the creative purpose. But this depends on the acceptance of ideas that music never gains any permanent existence in spite of notation, performance, recordings and all other material or conscious traces pertaining to the music’s presence, and hence that no one exclusively owns any music. (Kanno 2012, p. 176)

In line with the idea that no music can be ‘exclusively owned’, in the article At the knot of presence (Hellqvist Forthcoming b), I explore the idea of distributed ownership. In the complex process of creating One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) together with Liza, I experienced how the idea of ownership was as complex as the shared work. I discuss the many different kinds of ownerships in relation to the work: there was my perceived artistic ownership of the work; how I came to experience ownership as a result of participating with my artistic palette in the compositional process. Then, there was the legal ownership of the work as a product: the name(s) on the score, financial remuneration, prestige of authorship and attribution – for example in a concert programme or an album cover. Further, I have distinguished between perceived ownership of the performance of the work and perceived ownership of the notated score. In the case of One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin), I have discussed how my sense of owner- and authorship is different toward my performance and the notated score respectively. The idea of authorship of performance has been discussed by Kanno (2012) in As if the composer is dead. Kanno argues that in common classical music practices, the field of preparation and performance is where the performer practices their creativity. This space may however be negotiated in contemporary music composed by the influence of living composers. Kanno writes:

Collaboration

In this part of the discussion, I address the two research questions concerned with collaborative work in the project.

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?

Complementarity in shared work

In the case studies included in this portfolio, I give detailed accounts of shared work between me and my fellow artist-composers. I describe work methods, artistic materials, discussions, processes and results. One of the significantly recurring strengths that emerges from an analysis of the shared work is that of complementarity. Vera John-Steiner (2000, p. 3) writes that ‘in collaborative work we learn from each other by teaching what we know; we engage in mutual appropriation’. Through the shared work in this project, I have taught and shared what I know and have received new knowledge back; in this way my artistic palette has grown. I have used the consciousness of my artistic palette to articulate and communicate my knowledge regarding the many aspects of violin playing, of my embodied knowledge, of my history, my personal life, my preferences and my struggles. By doing so, I have taught others about my creativity and I have learnt things about myself. At the same time, I have learnt from my collaborators: their aesthetic preferences, their history, how they work and what they find difficult.

My collaborators and I have brought very different kinds of knowledge to our shared work. We have different personal artistic palettes, different experiences, history and ideals. My initial hope with the project was that the knowledge I had as a performer could be used in the compositional process, both to personalize works and to develop them in a violinistic sense. The different knowledges that the composers and I have come to bring into the collaborations have repeatedly proven to complement each other. This has been true for skillabilities in all dimensions of the artistic palette, not only the contextual ones. In the work on Gradients, my knowledge of playing techniques and my ideas about how to develop them complemented Henrik Strindberg’s knowledge of how to structure them in a large form. My embodied knowledge of Swedish folk music complemented the experimental performance techniques Liza Lim brought to the work on One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin). On Solastalgia, my imaginative ability when working with the sounds of the Arctic landscape evolved into a full artwork as it was complemented by Carola Bauckholt’s sense of dramaturgy and form. In the work on Eiksmarka Omland, Christian Wallumrød’s lifelong experiences of improvisation complemented my experiences of working with more detailed and pre-structured solo works. During the Chain of Triggers exercise, as Manos Tsangaris and I shared our everyday lives, our relational skillabilities complemented each other. We responded and supported each other, increasingly attentive to each other’s mood and struggles as we got to know each other better.

John-Steiner (2000, p. xvi) points out that, in collaboration, ‘success is based on the right mixture of diversity and similarity, in the skills and backgrounds of the participants, and on the way conflict is negotiated and resolved’. She further emphasizes complementarity as ‘the pluralism of human possibilities powerfully realized in partnered endeavors’ (John-Steiner, 2000, p. 54). Although my creative partners and I are situated in the same artistic field, as performer and composer we have not replicated each other’s skills and knowledge, but rather, by using our respective skillabilities and perspectives together, new knowledge has been created. This new knowledge would not be possible to access by one person working alone on the task. Thus, the shared work that has connected us in the artmaking has expanded our creative possibilities. In some cases, such as the work on Gradients, our contributions to the work became inseparable from each other, and instead of two separate artist’s voices, at its best, I could see one collective, artistic voice emerging in the artwork. John-Steiner links those processes of joint work that includes complementary and diversity of skills (artistic palettes) to the creative identity-making of the individual:

Collaboration benefits from complementarity in skills, experience, perspective, and the use of diverse methodologies honed within a discipline. Commitment to shared objectives, or a joint “passionate interest” in the subject matter, is crucial to joint endeavors. Sustained thinking and writing together, then, are not solely a cognitive activity. They involve relinquishing some aspects of individual autonomy, a possible temporary strain. But they can result in a broadening of the participants’ talents and resources, an appropriation of strategies, or modes of thought, that contributes to growth, even among mature thinkers. Sustained, mutually beneficial collaboration provides a mirror to an individual, broadening his or her self-knowledge, which is crucial to creativity. (John-Steiner, 2000, p. 48)

In many ways, the shared work processes in this project have acted as my personal mirrors to explore, develop, grasp and acknowledge my creativity. Through the evolving shared artistic work, processes of negotiating and developing my creativity unfold. By offering the space for collaboration to develop, my creative partners have provided me with a mirror for my individual creativity. In such a mutual process, the potential mirrors I have offered my collaborators may have developed their sense of self and creativity too.

The role of notation in collaborative work

Before I embarked on this project, the score was not only the site for communication between the composer and me, but also my primary source of information about a piece. With limited insight into the compositional process, I based my understanding of the music on the information provided by the score and its aesthetic context. As a faithful performer of musical works, I aimed to deliver an accurate performance of the work as represented by the score. Sometimes, the composer and I had an exchange of ideas regarding performative aspects such as tempo or technical difficulties and the score was updated accordingly. Some pieces were written for and dedicated to me; but I never shared authorship – or ownership – of any piece, however much my own playing was taken into account by the composer. The scores were often notated in complex ways to capture the wealth of detail of how the music should be performed. Hence, on stage, several music stands with large sheets of music were positioned between the audience and me.

With the transformation my practice has undergone over the course of this project, my relationship to notation and the score has changed. As I have become involved in the compositional process, sometimes notating the music myself, the score changes its status and meaning. The long history I have with the notated material makes each score a unique site, filled with meaning.

As seen in the case studies, the language of musical notation plays different roles in the different compositional processes. During the work on Gradients, notation entered from the beginning. In fact, notation was often a central point of my discussions with Henrik Strindberg. We frequently discussed how to notate new techniques and what to leave open in a notational structure. We notated form sketches and improvisations, developed new symbols and discussed notation in other creative practices. In 2023, when finally looking at the first bar in the notated version of Gradients, I could remember several discussions over email, phone and in workshop that we had had about that specific material. I remember the first attempts to structure the circular bow stroke, how the transitions between circular and oval bowing is explored, how we both began to draw form sketches, when Henrik was at my home for lunch and so on. My history with the score circled back for as long as the idea of the piece had been there. It was loaded with a multitude of meanings, connections, exchanges, problem-solving and laughter. Keith Sawyer calls this process of intertwining contributions a ‘zig-zag’, a ‘creative process of unpredictable twists and turns’ (Sawyer, 2014, p. 277). The collaborative nature of the work makes the outcome unpredictable and different from a compositional process undertaken alone.

Quite differently, during the work on Solastalgia with Carola Bauckholt, musical notation in the conventional sense was largely absent during the whole compositional process and through the premiere. Solastalgia was notated more than a year after its premiere, at which point it had already been performed several times. When, after a few performances, we decided that it was time to notate it so that other performers can engage with it, we were at first not sure what approach to take. Should we transcribe the improvised melodies I have played in concert? Or should we leave some parts open to improvisation with a given set of musical parameters? I made a hand-written draft of the score that originated in my performance, see Hellqvist (Forthcoming a), 2024. I included specific time codes showing when to start performing certain materials, and the musical materials I related to as I performed. I made use of written instructions, such as ‘Improvise melody fragments using II^nd and III^rd string. Vary register, silence between’. The openness and freedom this notation provided was what I myself wished to feel as I performed Solastalgia. Additionally, it left me curious about how other performers would interpret it and make their own version of the instructions. My notated sketch was then transcribed into a notational software by Carola, along with her comments and adjustments. As a result, the score of the 19-minute work fits on to two A4-pages, and a substantial part of it is left open as a partly structured improvisation. When premiering Solastalgia at rainy days in Luxembourg 2022, I performed it by heart, as there was no score to perform from. Once the score was ready, I used it mainly between concerts to remember the exact timings of elements in relation to the tape part. The music resided already in my body and mind. I never treated the score as faithfully as I used to treat other scores. The score was a skeleton-like script for my performance, rather than my performance being a reflection of the score.

Gradients and Solastalgia were both created mainly through collaborative work. Yet notation has played quite different roles in the compositional processes of the two works. In both cases, however, when notation was applied it was a collective task. Hence, in this project, the development of a fully collaborative work did not rely on notation as a driving force – or the complete absence of it.

During the shared work with Liza Lim, notation was not necessarily a shared site of communication between practices in the same way as in Gradients. When creating One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) we did not work together on the notation in close detail. Rather, notation become a way of collectively exploring form. One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) seeks to challenge the linear flow of the score and increase certain decision-making processes that the performer is equipped with in the act of performance. Throughout the work, pockets of materials circle around the main line, with the suggestion to add them as one finds it fitting. Also, as a kind of complex system of repeats, the nested repeats turn parts of the piece into a labyrinth (see case study of the work). One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) is the only piece in this research project that does not share legal ownership between composer and performer. Despite the pockets and nested repeats that diverge from the linear form of a musical work, the score therefore acts more as a traditional site for communication between Liza and me. The same tendency can be seen in the work with Christian Wallumrød. Once a notated melody entered the collaboration, it become our primary site for exploration. In retrospect, we realized that, due to a misunderstanding of each other’s intentions with the melody, notation in this collaboration tended to restrict my creativity and input as a performer. This is further outlined in the case study Eiksmarka Omland.

Figure 2. Connection, trust and responsibility as interlinked

Connection is the will and act of developing the creative partnership and linking practices and materials together. It includes both the accountability of showing up and doing the work and the personal connection of admiring and finding joy and appreciation in the interactions with the other. It represents the will to challenge the separation of practices in order to a develop an overlapping field of work. During the project, I have forged connections with my collaborators as well as with the music and the score. I experience how the shared creative processes have formed relational bonds with some of my collaborators that I will always carry with me. I have developed skillabilities of connection, such as caring for the creative partnership. Four years of cyclical work methods with Henrik Strindberg on Gradients have created a connection and friendship that will circle on after the end of the fellowship period. With Liza Lim, our shared work has sparked the idea for new pieces based on One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) that will connect us in the years to come.

To trust is to believe in the other and oneself. Feeling the trust of my collaborators has been important when developing new skillabilities from the intuitive and relational dimension of the artistic palette. In experimentation and trial, knowing that I have the space to make mistakes and fail has been crucial for building connection. Through trust, a safe space can grow. Vera John-Steiner (2000, p. xvii) points out how trust is a key feature of collaborative work. However, she writes that ‘one of the greatest challenges is establishing trust. In a trusting environment, radical ideas are respectfully considered, opportunities for full participation are guaranteed, and peers and co-workers, as well as leaders, are influential in creative outcomes.’ With Carola Bauckholt, a sense of trust began with my first attempts to map sounds, and developed throughout the years of composing Solastalgia together. I perceived that Carola trusted my creative skillabilities and viewed them as equally important as and complementary to her own. We have developed a profound mutual respect, which originated with the work for violin and electronics, Doppelbelichtung, in 2016, and deepened along the journey with Solastalgia.

I have experienced several kinds of responsibility in the project. I have felt responsible toward my collaborators to do my best for our shared work. I have felt responsible toward the evolving musical works, of giving them the best circumstances to grow to their full potential. Toward myself, I have felt responsible to develop my artistic palette and to follow the route of artistic development that I am on. Additionally, I have felt responsible to develop research that can contribute to the artistic research field and can give other artists inspiration and ideas to the development of collaborative work and artistic identity. When creating Eiksmarka Omland, I felt responsibility for the overall project in which I had asked Christian to participate. I wanted the work to be a fruitful experience for him. I was the one suggesting working with a pre-recorded tape part that can bring Christian’s performance into the work. This process turned out to be one of searching and experimenting, and I felt responsible for the outcome of it. With Chain of Triggers, a lurking worry and responsibility for the outcome of the experimental process accompanied me along the way. I felt responsible for the financial aspects of the project and tried to fit the needs of the work to the budget and resources that we had.

Music is a fundamental channel of communication: it provides a means by which people can share emotions, intentions and meanings even though their spoken languages may be mutually incomprehensible. It can also provide a vital lifeline to human interaction for those whose special needs make other means of communication difficult. Music can exert powerful physical effects, can produce deep and profound emotions within us, and can be used to generate infinitely subtle variations of expressiveness by skilled composers and performers. (Hargreaves et al., 2002, p. 1)

In this project I have experienced different ways of connection, of expressing trust and taking responsibility. Those connections grew out of the shared artmaking and had an importance of their own, beyond the pieces of music we created. They acted as support and inspiration as I developed an expanded practice. Further, they created interpersonal interaction that gave me the opportunity to grow as a human. They represent something like a ‘lifeline to human interaction’. Making music together with my fellow artists has provided me with opportunities to connect to my core values as a human. Hargreaves, Miell & McDonald (2002, p. 1) continue: ‘Our musical tastes and preferences can form an important statement of our values and attitudes, and composers and performers use their music to express their own distinctive views of the world’. The idea of collective music-making that can create trust, ownership and responsibility is linked to my personal view of the world and work-field in which I wish to live and be active. Developing shared work comprising connection, trust and responsibility has been a way of acting in line with my personal core values. Thus, using the skillabilities of the intuitive and the relational dimension of the artistic palette has embraced the ethical aspects of staying true to those values.

On many occasions, I believe that in the time it has taken for me to connect to my taste and aesthetic preferences, the composer might already have tuned in to his or her preference and perhaps expressed it. My compositional decision-making muscle has developed, but it still needs further training. This training is connected to abilities of the intuitive dimension of the artistic palette; tuning in to and communicating taste, preferences and values and the ability to develop future possible selves. As a performer, I am trained to offer an endless palette of possibilities for the composer to use: techniques, timbre, style and expression. My specialty as a performer of new works has been my ability to embody and communicate the wishes of the composer through my performance. In workshops and practice, I have asked myself what does the composer want? What does he or she mean? What is the intention? How can I breathe life into the score? During this project, instead, I have had to tune into what I want. I have had to tune into my taste, trying to locate this taste within myself. Where in the body is my taste situated, how do I connect to it? In decision-making processes, I have tried to give myself a moment of stillness to acknowledge this process or inward searching. In crossroads of shared decision-making and when composing myself, I notice that, in my head I hear voices abstractly connected to other artists, mainly composers, who express their preferences. They argue for certain styles and ideas, sometimes as if they were expressing universal truths about artmaking. I have had to practice how to listen patiently to those inner voices, sometimes to discover that behind them, other voices emerge. These may be the voices of artists from other artistic fields, of the voices audiences, or the voices of friends. Sometimes, there’s the voice that, in this messy meshwork of influences and collected experience, may actually be my own.

The ‘Transforming with the Artistic Palette’ project has offered me countless opportunities to connect to and cultivate my own inner voice. I have had to practice processes of self-observation and consciousness of my thought patterns. At times, I have felt I was engaged in a battle with the concept of Werktreue. I have had to work against my classical performer’s role in order to acknowledge my own creativity, not allowing it to be overruled by my fidelity to the work and the imagined intentions of the composer. I have been fighting to unlearn a timidity – a reluctance to speak up and contribute my own ideas – that is a natural outgrowth of living in the shadow of my performer’s ‘role’. This transformative battle, which is ongoing, is my path into the role of the creating artist.

What is taste? What is this aesthetic intuition, this artistic voice that I try to locate in creative processes? How can it be found? This inner voice well as my collaborators’ voices are present as artistic decisions are made and art created and thus, what guides us in artmaking.

Scholarship on musical identity and the psychological basis of musical thinking has exploded in the last decades, and a comprehensive overview is outside the scope of the project. I am using a social-constructivist view of the (musical) self. As Susan A. O’Neill suggests in The Self-identity of Young Musicians (2002, p. 85), a social constructionist approach does not view the self as a fixed entity, but focuses on the methods of constructing the self. O’Neill (2002, p. 91) writes that ‘social constructionism depicts the self as something that is fluid and constantly changing from situation to situation whilst embedded in social and cultural contexts’. Over the course of my lifetime, my experiences –- social, cultural, geographical, educational and gender-based --have influenced the construction of my identity and have made me who I am. Hargreaves, Miell and McDonald describe an emerging increasingly dynamic way of seeing the self and our identities:

The idea of the self as a kind of focus, or relatively unchanging core aspect of individuals’ personalities, has given way to a much less static and more dynamic view of the self as something which is constantly being reconstructed and renegotiated according to the experiences, situations and other people with whom we interact in everyday life. Globalization and technological advance have led to rapid recent changes in many people ’s lifestyles, and our self-identities are changing correspondingly in ever more complex ways. (Hargreaves, Miell & McDonald 2002, p. 1)

My experiences during this project play their part in constructing my identity, by creating new experiences, skillabilities and relations. My personal taste, which I practice connecting with in moments of decision-making, is in turn constructed from my identity, from the experiences that I carry with me. My taste is created through a complex interplay between my personal preferences and the surrounding social-cultural influences.

Through my experiences in the project, a new identity is constantly evolving. New encounters of co-creation and decision-making in artistic work build on my existing repertoire of experiences.

A similar experience is outlined in the account of the process creating Forlorn Hope (Gorton, 2012). Clarke, Doffman, Gorton and Östersjö notices how in the initial workshop phase the roles of composer and performer had a fluid character with ‘partially dissolved roles, instruments, tuning systems, living and dead composers, and embodied thinking-through-practice’ (2017, p. 133). However, as the score entered the process, the roles obtained a somewhat more solid character. Gorton and Östersjö then sit more conventionally in their composer and performer identities. ‘The production of a score therefore represents something of a watershed in the total creative process’ in this composition (Clarke et al. 2017, p. 133).

My experiences in this project, have powerfully changed my relationship to the score. I have had several opportunities to review my relation to score. All the collaborative processes have focused, in various ways, on the specific way I perform. Consequently, for me this has shifted the importance and meaning of the score toward meaning inscribed in my performance. In line with Nicholas Cook’s ideas of the possibility of viewing scores as scripts rather than texts (Cook, 2001), I have come to see the score more as a script for my performance than a text to which I need to stay faithful. Each detail in these scores aims at capturing something that is already inside me and in my performance. They are not regulating or trying to impose something onto my performance. Rather, they can open up, structure, capture, highlight and challenge me to go even further with my performance. Cook writes:

I suggest that it is only once you think of music as performance that you can start to make sense of scores. Seen in the context of performance culture, scores are much more like theatrical scripts than the literary text as which musicology has traditionally understood (or misunderstood) them, and that is just one of several ways in which thinking of music as performance means rethinking basic assumptions of the music-as-writing approach. (Cook, 2013, p. 1)

I have experienced a paradox in my new relation to scores. On the one hand, as I become more focused on performance, I am increasingly distanced from scores as a phenomenon. At the same time, as I have been working with scores – engaging in musical notation myself, being involved in creating it and sending it to publishing houses – I have become increasingly attached to them. I understand how a composer feels connected to the score as an object they have created. However, for me, scores are now rich sites of shared work, connection and exchange. Faithfulness, which used to be the primary characteristic in my relation to them, has increasingly shifted simultaneously toward senses of freedom and connection. In this project, I have taken Cook’s idea of rethinking the score as a script one step further. By co-composing the musical works in my repertoire, I am not only rethinking but co-creating the score.

Connection, trust and responsibility

There are some themes and expressions that recur in the accounts of the different relationships in this project. Among them are connection, trust and responsibility. Based on my collaborative experiences in this project, I suggest that those concepts are interlinked and influence each other. Together, they can be used as a model for understanding and enhancing shared work. In this project, establishing connection, trust and responsibility has proven important in order to develop meaningful shared work. Those expressions spring from my personal values and driving forces. Thus, they are linked to the intuitive dimension as well as the relational dimension of the artistic palette. Established connection through shared work has fed trust in the creative partnerships, responsibility for a common project has grown out of connection, and trust has in turn been needed in order to handle challenges in a creative connection. Several parallel processes have developed my relational and intuitive skillabilities. In this project, the evolving connection, trust and responsibility could be seen as by-products of collective work toward a shared goal as the musical work. However, for me, it has been those by-products that have turned the artistic processes into something larger than a resulting piece of music. It is in those dynamic relationships that I have found interpersonal value. Or as violinist and researcher Mieko Kanno (2012, p. 179) puts it: ‘music is not about the musical work after all, not even about performance or musical experience, but it is about people’.

I found it difficult to speak up for myself in the situations where I perceived my suggestions as discarded, and misunderstandings arose from a lack of communication. I believe my self-doubt and lack of experience was connected to my previous performer’s role. Thus, the roles we carried inhibited our shared work from flourishing to its full potential. Why did I find it difficult to speak about this? At the core of my experience was the uneasy feeling arising when suggesting that I would carve out a larger space for myself in the collaboration. I doubted my abilities and was afraid that Christian would not like the things I had created. Being unused to tuning into my taste, I also felt uncertain in my ability to evaluate my own creative contribution. I was not used to taking such decisions. As a performer my task had always been to optimize given materials rather than to evaluate them aesthetically.

Another example of experienced friction happened toward the end of the work on One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin). The question about ownership became something I felt somewhat unsettled about. Liza and I had based the work partly on my embodied knowledge and heritage of Swedish folk music, in combination with Liza’s artistic palette. We had been involved in worldmaking and storytelling, creating a very unique and special shared place for our piece. As I performed the piece, I felt that I was the piece, rather than representing it. Naturally, I see the piece as much as an exploration of Liza’s practice and skill as a composer. She has notated it and structured the form. The piece is dedicated to me and it has my name in the title. Each of us have written a separate programme note for it. I see a powerful combination of two practices and artists’ knowledge. Yet, as I have discussed in the case study of One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin), ownership was not discussed but applied in the conventional way where Liza as composer owns the work as the sole creator. I felt that I should have brought it up for discussion earlier, but I was too shy. Composer Sam Hayden and researcher Luke Windsor have written about collaborative work from the viewpoint of a number of case studies related to Hayden’s work as a composer. They suggest that

it seems as if the issue of collaboration is a potentially problematic domain for the composer. However motivated to enter into collaborations he or she may be, there may be tacit or explicit resistance to the idea of giving up creative control. (Hayden & Windsor, 2007, p. 31)

I never felt that Liza was reluctant to give up control of the artistic development of the piece. Rather the opposite: I experienced her warm interest and her desire to bring my heritage of traditional Swedish folk music into her practice as very open and generous. Eventually, I asked Liza for some named credit on the piece; and she agreed to designate the piece as having been created ‘with’ me. She seemed perfectly happy with this, and I felt very satisfied that I had asked. The friction I experienced had catalyzed a new way of communicating shared work on a piece in my repertoire.

These three examples of external friction sparked varied feelings. There was the stress of not being able to accommodate the needs of a growing work, the insecure feeling of not knowing how my suggestions would be received, and the somewhat painful realization that ownership remains a territory profoundly influenced by established structures. However, those hardships have also been fruitful: for the development of the works, for the relationships and built experience, and for my ability to collaborate in the future. I have learnt the importance of being clear early on about the available production resources for a project. I have seen the importance of being honest about my insecurities as soon as possible, as they may result from simple misunderstandings. And I have learnt that it is best to have the discussion about ownership as early as possible in shared work. From the limited resources in Manos’s and my production budget, a completely new kind of aesthetic format of a piece in my repertoire grew. Christian and I had a good laugh as we realized that a misunderstanding had set premises for the work. In line with Donin’s reasoning outlined in the section about ownership, every aspect of the shared process set its premises and thus influenced the work. And in our email dialogue, Liza admitted that our shared process and discussion of ownership offered her food for thought and perspectives on her role as composer.

Transformation

On stage as a performing composer / composing performer

Given the nature of the shared work and the increased sense of ownership, responsibility and empowerment, has the experience of performing these works in concert been different than my previous experience?

As I write this reflection, three of the works in which I have a role as a performer have been premiered. I have performed Solastalgia and One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) six or seven times already, and Gradientsthree times. I find that when I am performing works I have co-created and in which I share the ownership, I feel that more is at stake. In the vulnerable act of performing those works, which I often do by heart, I embody two roles in one body: I am both the performer and the composer. I am responsible not only for interpreting the score and breathing life into it, but for the overall aesthetic aspects of it. On stage, this is a position with two sides to it. I have experienced profound ownership and pride of the work I embody. I have sensed joy and connection to my co-creator who is present in so many ways in the work. At the same time, I have worried about the aesthetic quality of the music. I have worried about such things as whether my contribution to the compositional process has been beneficial. I have also felt a new kind of vulnerability: the humbling experience of presenting to the public something that is dear to me, knowing that I am exposing it to whatever response – positive or negative – my audience has. I have come to understand – and to feel in my own body – the vulnerability of the composer.

This project has mainly focused on how the compositional process can be shared. But in several works in this project, the shared creativity has also spilled over on to the performance process. Collectively evaluating a performance of a shared work or a recording of it has been an important way of developing pieces further. I have not felt defensive or intimidated by comments from my collaborators on how the performance can be improved. Especially with Solastalgia, delaying the notation of a score for the piece allowed us to engage in highly productive post-performance discussions during which we could collectively continue developing the work. Similarly, after the premiere of Gradients, we had the opportunity to make quite substantial changes to the score together, all based on the recording of it and our impressions of my performance. Some difficult aspects of the work that we discussed, Henrik encouraged me to keep in the score. Having seen my performances of his previous solo work for me, Femte strängen (2010), he trusted my potential to master these difficulties over time and was not worried by the fact that some things might not be perfect in the premiere of the piece. He encouraged me to treat the material freely rather than focusing on details in the notation.

In January 2024 I performed Solastalgia at the Royal College of Music Stockholm. Afterwards, trombone player and composer Ivo Nilsson afterwards suggested that, in my performance, I challenged the way musical works in our field are conventionally represented by the performer. As I performed Solastalgia, I did not represent the work – I was the work, Ivo suggested. His comment confirmed to me that the cocktail of embodiment, connection, responsibility and ownership I experience on stage with the work can become tangible for the audience as well. This observation further resonates with how Fischer-Lichte and Cook view the musical work as performance, as discussed in the introduction.

In concert situations and discussions during the project, I have been reminded time and again how unusual shared ownership still is in the field of contemporary Western art music. Works created in the project are often referred with familiar phrases such as ‘Carola’s piece for Karin’. And in discussions with people who do not know the whole context of my research, I sometimes hear myself taking such verbal shortcuts. However, my collaborators in these co-owned works have been very keen to highlight that the work is co-composed and shared. A transformation of established structures of ownership might not happen overnight, but with patience and an increased number of examples of shared work, I see it coming.

This artistic research project was formulated as a result of my previous experiences of internal friction. This friction was combined with the desire to challenge prevailing structures and develop alternatives. During the fellowship period, I have seen my internal friction transforming with my expanding practice. As I have become more creative and involved in the compositional processes, the old kind of friction has diminished. On the other hand, I have faced new challenges. Markus & Nurius (1986, p. 960) write that ‘possible selves give specific cognitive form to our desires for mastery, power, or affiliation, and to our diffuse fears of failure and incompetence’. I am still facing my fear of failure, but in a transformed shape. I used to fear not being an accurate enough performer of the notated musical work. Now, fear is instead becoming increasingly directed toward not being a good enough artist and co-composer.

Another example of internal friction is outlined in the case study of Eiksmarka Omland, where an ‘efficiency mindset’ complicated my engagement with improvisation. The efficiency mindset, which I connect to my classical performer’s role, wants to see concrete results and improvements. It is developed over many busy years of result-oriented work of studying new repertoire. As I started to engage in activities such as improvisation, which were explicitly non-result focused, my efficiency mindset was challenged. I felt resistance and uncertainty in the face of open-ended processes. During the project, I have had to develop new mindsets and add new skills to my artistic palette in order to allow for work that to a larger degree embraces searching, experimentation and try-out.

I have further faced my own doubts about the research project itself, including doubts about my idea of such a thing as the artistic palette. In the beginning of my fellowship period, I felt insecure when explaining that I needed such a concept, and what it was. I doubted my own creative abilities. I felt vulnerable when my auto-ethnographic accounts of artistic processes were published. Some aspects of the co-creative work were painfully new to me, although closely situated to my practice and the musical works I perform. Form-related questions in particular, made me unsure, and decision-making generally came with some effort. In the vulnerable stages of transformation and transition between selves, we are likely to experience fear and sensitivity toward our environment. Markus & Nurius write:

because possible selves are not well anchored in social experience, they comprise the self-knowledge that is the most vulnerable and responsive to changes in the environment. They are the first elements of the self-concept to absorb and reveal such change. As representations of potential, possible selves will thus be particularly sensitive to those situations that communicate new or inconsistent information about the self. (Markus & Nurius 1986, p. 956)

Thankfully, the framework of artistic research has provided me with the space (and expectation) to meet those struggles and reflect on them. I have been encouraged to explore those feelings, rather than to ignore them. I have become increasingly aware of my internal friction. And, at times, I have managed to distance myself from it and view it with curiosity and interest, even to use it as valuable input for my research. My increased ability to meet my internal friction has proved to be a central ability of the artistic palette’s intuitive dimension, connecting me to my values and fears. By developing new skillabilies, the internal friction has transformed.

Contribution and dissemination

What does this artistic research project contribute to the artistic field and research context in which it is situated? I have pursued this artistic research project partly for my own sake. I have expanded my practice, addressed friction in my work with contemporary classical music and created a concept to empower me along the way. However, on my journey, I have also often considered how my research can be of use for others who are interested in developing collaborative work and becoming increasingly creative in their practice. I have not framed my experiences as a tutorial or guide on to how to collaborate. Instead, the case studies included in this portfolio are examples of the kind of materials I had wished to engage with myself, both as a student and professional performer. It describes some specific practical approaches to collaborative work that I have tried out and how I have experimented with my own practice in order to become increasingly creative. Perhaps others would like to engage in a game-like practice like the Chain of Triggers in the initial phase of a collaboration to establish trust and a safe space? Or developing a mapping practice similar to the one I did during the work on Solastalgia? In the start of a joint project, is it possible to plan for a very generous timeframe as Henrik and I enjoyed during our work on Gradients? Can a performer’s embodied knowledge act as the starting point for explorations in the initial phase of a new work as in One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin)? How can a solo piece be created as a duet between two performers as in Eiksmarka Omland? What new skillabilities can develop when creating a multi-layered composition as Pango? I hope those ideas and approaches can inspire others to develop their co-creative work.

In this project, I have created the concept of the artistic palette. This is a concept that others can bring with them into creative work. I dearly hope that the artistic palette can inspire others on their artistic journeys. My aim is that the artistic palette can act as empowering food for thought for others who wish to view their skills and abilities in an open, poetic, personal and imaginative way. The idea of an artistic palette may take a very different form in the hands of a composer, an actor or a visual artist. The concept is open for others to build on further. The social-constructionist way of viewing identity suggest that our identities are constantly emerging and re-constructed. Thus, we constantly develop new identities. In this project, my artistic identity has been negotiated through the process of creating music with the artistic palette, and I suggest that the artistic palette can be a tool for the exploration and development of identity and role.

In this project, I have applied a method of developing my artistic-research reflection during the process of the research, rather than as a conclusion to a finished project. My reflection is found in a number of published materials that act as satellites of communication, reaching out of my research. My audio paper on Solastalgia for Seismograf and my article ‘Circular bowing, cyclical work’ in VIS Nordic Journal for Artistic Research were both published in 2022. I applied to the Arts Council Norway to write an article about Solastalgia in their anthology in early 2021. This means that some texts that I have written at an early stage in the project might not be in perfect harmony with my later thoughts. I may have changed my mind about some things along the course of the research. However, I hope that this way of structuring my reflection can be inspiring as a process-oriented account. It is my hope that the reader can see how the transformative aspects central to the project have evolved, rather than reading an account from some kind of endpoint. I hope that the publication of my reflections in a variety of established channels for artistic research will make my thoughts available to a diverse audience.

During the course of this project, I have also had the chance to present my research orally on several different occasions. I have talked to, and played for, students, composers, artists, performers, peer-reviewers, researchers, radio audiences and academics from other fields. Those interactions have been enormously beneficial for me on my own journey. I have been offered interest, critique and the opportunity to develop my thoughts. Whenever I have had the chance to frame my concert activity with my thoughts around collaborative work and the artistic palette, I have done so. Consequently, thoughts from my research have trickled out, and I hope they have reached some of those who do not find their way to this research portfolio. I find that such a small detail as a printed concert programme with my name as a co-composer on it, including programme notes that I have written myself, can pique curiosity and open the door to fruitful discussion.

Among the central contributions of this project are, of course, the musical works. (A list of all the concerts and dissemination activities during the fellowship period is listed in the end of this discussion.) Through the life of the works, in my own hands and I hope also others, the project continues to develop after my time as a research fellow. Common to all the works composed in the project, is that they all have been created with the specificity of my artistic palette in mind. They are idiosyncratic works created for my body and artistic palette. What does this mean for them as potential repertoire for others?

Each musical work I engage with as a performer reflects an artistic palette, whether it is that of a composer or another co-composing performer. It is up to other violinists to decide how they want to engage with the works of the project. Solastalgia includes several improvisational sections where the performer can create a unique version if comfortable with that. Chain of Triggers hardly make sense for others to use as resultant ‘piece’ but can instead be relevant as a method of building connection previous to collaborative work. When performing Eiksmarka Omland, the performer is invited into a duet with Christian Wallumrød, whom they may or may not otherwise know. And in the last movement of One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin), performers are encouraged to let their embodied knowledge play the leading role.

Inspired by the shared work in the creative partnerships that I have been fortunate to experience in this project, I dream about continuing working with the composers involved in the project. John-Steiner (2000) has studied collaboration in both science and art as well as within the family. She exemplifies how famous partnerships such as Pierre and Marie Curie, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque show us how complementarity and new modes of thought can emerge over long periods of time. Already, some of the collaborations have concrete paths for their continuation. Liza Lim is composing a violin and ensemble piece based on the second movement of One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin), called Calling the Ancestral River. I will premiere the work with ELISION in Sydney in 2024. Manos Tsangaris and I are working on the continuation of the Chain of Triggers– a staged duo piece called Double Portrait.

I hope that all the works created in this project have a high degree of idiomatic particularity in them – a standard for something like violinistic exploration, joy and challenge. The performative and technical materials are all grounded in my knowledge as a violinist and performer through various collaborative processes. I hope the works offer space for freedom, personalization and growth. As Henrik Strindberg reminded me when we completed the final score for Gradients: ‘You told me in the very beginning of our work that you wanted a piece that could challenge you’.

New questions for further research

My research started with a set of questions that I wished to explore. I have tried to answer some of those in this portfolio and some answers you may find within the musical works. However, the research process itself has given rise to new questions.

I would like to explore and develop the idea of the artistic palette further as a pedagogical tool to help students in their creative development. Can the artistic palette be a tool for reflection in student’s practices? Can they be better equipped to pursue creative work by becoming aware of their skillabilities? Can the artistic palette help classical music students to create a wider repertoire of possible future selves to guide them when creating an expanded performer’s role? The practices of students in both performance and composition are areas to explore these possibilities. Based on the research findings from this project, I would like to further explore how shared creative work between student composers and performers can be integrated at an early stage in higher education.

I am also interested in directing focus to how the practice of the composer may be affected by a performance practice in transformation. This artistic research project has been conducted from my personal, subjective standpoint and the findings are described from my perspective as a performer. However, as I view my transformative process largely as one of social change, I suspect that change has occurred in the practices of my fellow artists too. This is a topic for further research. Collaborators like guitarist Stefan Östersjö and composer Henrik Frisk have done joint research during the compositional process (Frisk & Östersjö, 2006). Cellist Neil Hyde and composer Fabrice Fitch have also described their collaboration in a dialogical way in (Fitch & Heyde, 2007). I would be interested in contributing to the field of such joint research with the artistic palette as starting point.

Another potential research question is how the concept of the artistic palette can be explored in the light of some important lines of thought from the past century. One such idea that resonates with the artistic palette’s emerging, dynamic and transformative nature is the concept of becoming as introduced by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. The artistic palette is in a state of becoming, continually adjusting itself to the surrounding environment. Its potential as a transforming concept has been explored in this portfolio. What additional perspectives can Deleuze’s concept offer the artistic palette? Further, the philosophical world of ideas sprung from French philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour could be an interesting framework in which to situate the artistic palette. Latour’s actor–network theory, which states that everything exists in relationships of a constantly shifting nature, resonates with the post-anthropocentric ideas of mycelia, ‘musicking’ and distributed creativity explored in this reflection. Another idea that might inform our understanding of the artistic palette is the theory of habitus, developed by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. It would be interesting to view the transition between the classical performer’s role and the creative one in terms of the internalized models of thought that a habitus represents. Those ideas can be paths to continue the exploration of the artistic palette as situated in modern philosophy.

I have written at length about all that I have done and accomplished in this artistic research project. But are there things that I wanted to do that for some reason I did not do? The breadth of the activities in my project has been extensive and time consuming, although full of joy and growth. One of the activities that I would have liked to pursue if time had allowed, would be to conduct several in-depth interviews with my collaborators. This, I suspect, could reveal valuable information on their view of the artistic and research processes. Further, I would also have liked to compose more on my own. Pango was composed at a relatively early stage in the project. The compositional process was one of budding, curious experimentation and searching. After having gained experience of several co-composed works, I suspect that my take on creating such a piece would be somehow different.

Transforming with the artistic palette

One of my favourite quotations from Vera John-Steiner is ‘Through collaboration we can transcend the constraints of biology, of time, of habit, and achieve a fuller self, beyond the limitations of the isolated individual’ (John-Seiner 2000, 188). The idea that collaboration can help us achieve a fuller self, is something that I connect to the idea of transformation in my project. I set out to investigate whether the act of using my artistic palette in shared work could have the potential to transform my practice to be an expanded, creative one. Has my research created transformation and a fuller self?

It is of course my highly subjective statement to say that my practice is being transformed – completely changed and improved. What is an improvement in practice anyway? This project has spanned six years, a relatively long time for an artistic research project compared to the suggested three years that the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme outlines. Some of the transformational processes in the project were not yet fully developed after three years. During my fellowship period, my practice underwent several changes in different areas. To me, those changes in work methods, attitudes, skills and abilities, together contributed to a practice under transformation. During the fellowship period, the collaborative work and my thoughts about the artistic palette started to facilitate connection, trust and responsibility toward my collaborators and the musical works. I sensed an increased ownership of the works, and my relation to the performance of them was changing. I became more focused on the compositional process and the performance rather than on the resultant score. My relation to the score was changing too. All those changes happened at different times and at various speeds. Some were eureka-moments while other became clearly visible for me only as I remembered how I used to act.

In contexts outside of my research project, I have seen change happening too. Today, I plan for increased connection in the new projects I take on. If the premises are not right, I do not feel obliged to pursue the project. The thought of co-composing does not scare me off; rather, I can see the potential to grow. When in dialogue around new works written for me, I bring in my wish to be involved in the process at the very beginning. My repertoire becomes more of a curatorial project that a stream of works that come my way. I see increased sustainability in the works I engage with; by investing more in a piece, I expect to also be able to live with it longer. The transformative aspects that the project has had on my practice will continue circling into future work. Interestingly enough, the new performer’s role I see growing out of my project has several parallels to the performer’s role before the 1800s and the emergence of Werktreue. Like musicians at that time, I engage both in composition and performance. I am not faithful toward the musical works to the extent that I limit my own contributions or creativity. I engage in improvisation and I use the musical score as a script for my performance rather than an absolute text.

By engaging in the compositional process myself, and claiming ownership or shared ownership of some of those works, I have challenged the work-concept. I’m not sure I ever thought the work-concept could be challenged, and it was certainly not my aim in this project to do so. My discomfort as a performing artist has rather been rooted in what seemed to be the limitations of my role as ‘performer’. The project has raised my awareness of how my practice is affected by structures that stretch far beyond myself. I have experimented with ways of challenging the manifestations of those structures in my own practice. Several opportunities to create change have arisen. I have come to understand how Werktreue’s focus on faithfulness to the musical work influences my practice, and I have started to change both my practical and the philosophical approaches toward it. I have come to see creativity as a muscle that I need to train in ways that my previous performer’s role did not encourage.

Internal and external friction

In the course of presenting and discussing the project with peers, I have sometimes been asked whether the project really has been such a sunny walk in the park? Where are the conflicts, the friction and hardships on the journey toward an expanded practice and shared work? Certainly, my research journey has not unfolded entirely without a few cloudy skies. But surprisingly few moments of friction have developed into actual conflict. Discussion and the sharing of constructive critique have developed as necessary and important parts of co-creative work. We have managed to use discussions from our different standpoints constructively. Perhaps, this is in some cases an effect of previously shared work and established relationships. However, when thinking of difficulties, there are also the personal struggles I have had along the way. There have thus been two kinds of friction during the project: internal and external friction. And if heated external friction has been largely absent, I have experienced my share of internal friction on my journey.

External friction has taken the form of problems or conflicts that have arisen during the teamwork with my collaborators. Three instances of this will give an idea. In my work with Manos Tsangaris, practical and economic resources become a problem as we began planning our piece in detail for the premiere in 2023–24. Working with staged pieces of music theatre requires a whole other set of resources than an acoustic work for solo violin. In 2018, when I asked Manos to be a part of my PhD, neither of us knew what kind of work would be created and what it would require in terms of production recourses. During the project period, the piece started growing into a music theatre work with quite specific needs regarding the performance space. Manos suggested seating the audience in a two-sided manner in the hall, which had implications for the rest of the works in a concert situation. Further, the idea was to hang strings from the ceiling, functioning as triggers for various objects and actions. The work was turning into an installation-like work with the two of us as actors, incorporated in Manos’ larger work for the Wien Modern festival later in 2024. Mounting a work of such an amplitude would take several days and include two specific technicians from Germany. The commission fee was not sufficient to cover the extra costs. After some discussion, we decided to premiere the work at Wien Modern, and instead make a printed publication for my final performance in Oslo, the Chain of Triggers. The economic aspects of this case study were stressful. In 2022, I made a successful application for more production money than the already-granted composition fee, but it still did not meet the demands of the piece. I wanted to develop the piece to its full potential together with Manos, but on the other hand, in the end I had no more resources to offer. I worried that Manos was disappointed by the fact that our piece could not be realized in Oslo and that I could not mobilize more funding. I felt responsible for the work as the commissioner, and this pushed me into the boring role of bean-counter – every so often asking how expensive different aesthetic solutions would be. This case study taught me the importance of discussing expectations and resources well beforehand.

Another case of misunderstanding happened with Christian Wallumrød in the process leading up to the album recording of Eiksmarka Omland. During a discussion about the material and form of our piece, I misunderstood Christian. He had written the melody that Eiksmarka Omland was constructed around. When we spoke about it after some trial sessions, Christian told me the melody was more or less finished. I understood that to mean that we had the fundament for the whole piece, and that we now should concentrate on developing this particular melodic material further, while not necessarily generating new parts. As the rest of our work evolved, I had the feeling we were not entirely on the same page and that we might carry different expectations on the process. Time was short before we were about to record the still unfinished work, and this put increased pressure on our process. In this stressed decision-making process, I felt that Christian took some decisions without the previous discussion I had expected. Some of my suggestions for the development of the work were not brought in for discussion but were replaced with other materials. As this happened, I became unsure about what Christian wanted and reluctant to suggest new materials. However, later on, as we spoke about this particular dis-synchronized feeling, it turned out that, when he said the melody was more or less finished, Christian was in fact offering it as one of several possible components. With this melody more or less finished in itself, he saw the work ahead of us more focused on developing other kinds of materials – quite the opposite of what I thought. Christian had thus been waiting for me to suggest new materials, just as I was becoming more passive, falling back into the mindset of my previous performer’s role, shy to make suggestions.

I have also engaged in my own composition outside of the collaborative frameworks. This has meant that I have entered the role of the composer and found myself ‘alone’ in imaginative and decision-making processes. When I say ‘alone’, I mean that I have had the experience of being alone in the room with my own thoughts; I do not mean alone in the creative ‘world of the work’, which during the project I have experienced as profoundly connected to a larger social and cultural context. I have met resistance and friction in the process of becoming a composer, as well as in the shared work. I have had to train my creative muscles through evaluation, imagination and the process of tuning in to my taste.

Kanno (2023) writes that ‘research is to make tomorrow a better place’. This statement has resonated in my project in many ways. To conclude the transformational aspects of the ‘Transforming with the Artistic Palette’ project, the major, overarching transformation that the project has had on me is my journey from an interpreting performer to a creating artist. Elements of composition, improvisation, notation, collaboration and the use audio technology now sit close to my performance practice in an expanded artistic role. The artmaking, the interaction with my fellow artists and our engagement with the skillabilities in the different dimensions of my artistic palette, have made this journey possible. My research project has been a stretched-out liminal space between my previous performer’s role and something new that has gradually opened up and is still opening. I see my practice as liquid, or porous; not defined by role but rather adopting to whatever artistic activity I choose to engage in. Today, I engage in music-making in a more holistic way; my practice still has its foundation in performance, but I am now engaging in all parts of music’s ecosystem of idea–composition–study–performance.

This artistic research project carves out a very special period of time on my path as an artist. I am extremely grateful for the luxury of such resources as time, finances and professional guidance from wise supervisors and peers to develop my practice alongside outstanding collaborators. The effects of the processes the project has created will reach far into my future.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY & DISSEMINATION

Broadcasts and features

May 2024: One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) featured in BBC4 Woman’s Hour. Editor Martha Owen.

May 2024: Solastalgia featured in WDR3 in a feature created by Sabine Fringes.

April 2024: Audio paper Solastalgia – the voicing of a fading natural resource featured in upcoming book on the format of the audio paper by Stefan Östersjö and Sanne Krogh Groth for the Study of Sound Series, Bloomsbury Publishing.

November 2022: Audio paper Solastalgia – the voicing of a fading natural resource featured in SWR2, Germany. Broadcasted interview and excerpts of the audio paper in ‘Ich höre, also weiß ich: Das kreative Wissenschaftsformat “Audio Paper”’. Editor: Friedmann Dupelius.

September 2023: Radio broadcast of One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin), Gradients and Solastalgia. Radio Austria. Live from Klangspuren Schwaz 2023

April 2023: Radio broadcast of Solastalgia. Westdeutsche Rundfunk. Live from Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik 2023.

Hellqvist, K. (2022c). Heartbeats at the knot of presence. Portable Gray, 5(1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/720493

Hellqvist, K. (2022d). Solastalgia: Layers of caring. Ruukku – Studies in Artistic Research Nr. 18. www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1369344/1369345

Hellqvist, K. (Forthcoming a). Solastalgia – Toward new collaborative models in an interdisciplinary context. In A. N. Hagen, R. T. Solberg, T. U. Nærland, & M. F. Duch, (Eds.). Når musikken tek form: Om skapande praksisar i musikk. Fagbokforlaget.

Hellqvist, K. (Forthcoming b). At the knot of presence: Weaving with my artistic palette in Liza Lim’s One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin). Journal for Artistic Research, Issue 33.

John-Steiner, V. (2000). Creative collaboration. Oxford University Press.

Kanno, M. (2012) As if the composer is dead, Mortality, 17(2), 170–181, DOI: 10.1080/13576275.2012.675197

Kanno, M. (2023) Artistic research! Where are we today? Music & Practice, 10. DOI: 10.32063/1004

Lim, L. (2013) A mycelial model for understanding distributed creativity: Collaborative partnership in the making of ‘Axis Mundi’ (2013) for solo bassoon [Conference paper]. Performance Studies Network Second International Conference 2013, 4–7 April 2013, Cambridge, UK.

Lim, L. (2014). Winding Bodies: 3 Knots [Score]. Casa Ricordi.

Lüneburg, B. (2013). A holistic view of the creative potential of performance practice in contemporary music [PhD Thesis. School of Arts, Brunel University London].

Lüneburg, B. (2023) Knowledge production in artistic research–opportunities and challenges. Music & Practice, 10. DOI: 10.32063/1009

Markus, H. & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologist, 41, 954–969. 10.1037/0003–066X.41.9.954.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception. Routledge.

Nicholls, S. (2017). Collaboration: Making it work. In E. Clarke & M. Doffman (Eds.), Distributed creativity. Collaboration and improvisation in contemporary music (114–115). Oxford University Press.

O’Neill, S. (2002). The Self-Identity of Young Musicians. In R. Hargreaves, D. J., Miell, D., & MacDonald (Eds.), What are musical identities, and why are they important?. Oxford University Press.

Orning, T. (2014). The polyphonic performer: A study of performance practice in music for solo cello by Morton Feldman, Helmut Lachenmann, Klaus K. Hübler and Simon Steen-Andersen. [Doctoral dissertation, Norwegian Academy of Music]. https://nmh.brage.unit.no/nmh-xmlui/handle/11250/2626846

Poylanyi, M. (1966). The tacit dimension. University of Chicago Press.

Sawyer, K. (2014). Musical performance as collaborative practice. In M. S. Barrett (Ed.), (2014) Collaborative creative thought and practice in music (pp. 271–286). Routledge.

Sawyer, R. K., & DeZutter, S. (2009). Distributed creativity: How collective creations emerge from collaboration.Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 3(2), 81–92.

Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner. How professionals think in action. Basic Books.

Small, C. (1998). Musicking. Wesleyan University Press.

Steinberg, M. (2017). Rostropovich’s influence went beyond repertoire and technique as a cellist. Strings magazine.https://stringsmagazine.com/rostropovichs-influence-went-beyond-repertoire-and-technique-as-a-cellist/

Strindberg, H. (2009) Femte strängen. Svensk Musik.

Svenungsson, J. (2007). An artist’s text book. Finnish Academy of Fine Arts.

Taylor, A. (2016). ‘Collaboration’ in contemporary music: A theoretical view. Contemporary Music Review, 35(6), 562–578.

Torrence, J. (2018). Rethinking the performer: Towards a devising performance practice. VIS – Nordic Journal for Artistic Research. https://doi.org/10.22501/vis.391025

Ugelvik, E. K. (2018) The soloist in contemporary piano concerti. Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo. https://doi.org/10.22501/nmh-ar.31172

Östersjö, S. (2020). Listening to the other. Orpheus Institute.

Dissemination

October 2024: Project presentation. Alliances and Commonalities Conference at Stockholm University of the Arts, Sweden.

September 2024: Publication of peer reviewed article Solastalgia – exploring collaborative composition through addressing a fading natural resource. Arts Council Norway.

September 2024: Presentation of the artistic results in concert. Jakobskirken Oslo. Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival, Norway.

September 2024: Release of solo album Palette including Solastalgia, One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin), Gradients and Eiksmarka Omland. LAWO Classics.

May 2024: Performances of Solastalgia, One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) and Gradients. Frequenz Festival in Kiel and Plön, Germany.

February 2024: Project presentation. Royal College of Music, Stockholm, Sweden.

January 2024: Performing Solastalgia. Royal College of Music, Stockholm, Sweden.

November 2023: Recording album with LAWO Classics, including Solastalgia, One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin), Gradients and Eiksmarka Omland.

November 2023: Project presentation for the Swedish Society of Composers, together with Henrik Strindberg. Stockholm, Sweden.

September 2023: Performance of One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin), Gradients and Solastalgia. Klangspuren Festival, Schwatz, Austria.

August 2023: Performance of One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin), Gradients and Solastalgia. Akademie der Künste Berlin, Germany.

July 2023: Performance of One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin). Kontinent Dalsland Festival, Sweden.

April 2023: Premiere of Solastalgia (version with video). Wittener Tage für Neue Musik, Germany.

November 2022: Premiere of One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) and Solastalgia (version without video). rainy days festival, Luxembourg.

March 2022: Project presentation. Royal College of Music Stockholm, Sweden.

July 2022: Online presentation of Solastalgia at 13th SAR Conference Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.

June 2022: Workshop-presentation together with Liza Lim on One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin). DAAD Uncommon Grounds Festival, DAAD Gallerie, Berlin, Germany.

June 2022: Publication of ‘Heartbeats at the Knot of Presence’, an essay on One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) in Portable Gray.

May 2022: Concert with Ingar Zach. Stockholm Concert House, Sweden.

April 2022: Premiere of Pango. Kungliga Konsthögskolan Stockholm, Sweden.

December 2021: Publication of peer reviewed audio paper Solastalgia – negotiating conventional paths of creation through a collective voicing of a fading natural resource. Seismograf.dk

December 2021: Presentation of One and the Other (Speculative Polskas for Karin) with Liza Lim. Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Germany.

November 2021: Presentation of Pango. Kungliga Konsthögskolan Stockholm, Sweden.

November 2021: Publication and launch of peer reviewed article in Antarktikos Magazine: Solastalgia – mourning through the translation of ice. The Netherlands.

October 2019: Project presentation, Royal College of Music Stockholm, Sweden.

June 2019: Project presentation, Svenska Samfundet för Musikforskning Conference, Gothenburg, Sweden.

January 2019: Premiere performance of own solo work, Näktergal Filter, at Ny Musikk Stavanger, Norway.

2018–2024: Mandatory course work and presentations within the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme.

Bibliography

Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Harvard University Press.

Barrett, M. S. (Ed.). (2014) Collaborative creative thought and practice in music. Routledge.

Bauckholt, C. (2016) Doppelbelichtung. Edition Peters.

Baudouin Lie, M. (2017) Making Sense: an artistic research project by Marianne Baudouin Lie – Cellist and artistic researcher. Norwegian University of Science and Technology. www.makingsense.no/

Borregaard, A. (2023). Just Do It! Exploring the musician’s (use of) bodily performance. Norwegian Academy of Music. https://doi.org/10.22501/nmh-ar.1926394

Breie Nyhus, I. (2017). A play with traditions. Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo. www.researchcatalogue.net/view/553556/553557

Clarke, E., Doffman, M., Gorton, D., & Östersjö, S. (2017). Fluid practices, solid roles? The evolution of Forlorn Hope. In E. Clarke & M. Doffman (Eds.), Distributed creativity. Collaboration and improvisation in contemporary music(116–135). Oxford University Press.

Clarke, E., Doffman, M., & Lim, L. (2013). Distributed creativity and ecological dynamics: A case study of Liza Lim’s ‘tongue of the invisible’. Music & Letters, 94(4), 628–663.

Cook, N. (2001). Between process and product: Music and/as performance. Music Theory Online, 7(2). www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.01.7.2/mto.01.7.2.cook.html#Beginning

Cook, N. (2013). Beyond the score: Music as performance. Oxford University Press.

Doffman, M. & Calvin, J.-P. (2017). Contemporary music in action: Performer–composer collaboration within the conservatoire. In E. Clarke & M. Doffman (Eds.), Distributed creativity. Collaboration and improvisation in contemporary music (184–198). Oxford University Press.

Donin, N. (2018). Domesticating Gesture: the Collaborative Creative Process of Florence Baschet’s StreicherKreis for ‘augmented’ string quartet (2006–08). In E. Clarke, & M. Doffman (Eds.), Distributed creativity: Collaboration and improvisation in contemporary music (pp. 70–87). Oxford University Press, 2018.

Ellis, C. & Bochner, A. (2000). Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity: Researcher as subject, in N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd Ed., pp. 733–768), Sage.

Fischer-Lichte, E. (2008). The transformative power of performance. Routledge.

Fitch, F. J. and Heyde, N. (2007) ‘Recercar’: The collaborative process as invention. Twenthieth-Century Music, 4(1), 71–95.

Frisk, H., & Östersjö, S. (2006). Negotiating the musical work: An empirical study. In G. Essl (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2006 International Computer Music Conference (242–249). International Computer Music Association.

Goehr, L. (1992) The imaginary museum of musical works: An essay in the philosophy of music. Oxford University Press.

Gyger, E. (2014). Mapping Composer-Performer Collaboration. In M. S. Barrett (Ed.), Collaborative creative thought and practice in music (pp. 33–47) Routledge.

Hargreaves, D. J., Miell, D., & MacDonald, R. A. R. (2002). What are musical identities, and why are they important? In R. A. R. Hargreaves, D. J., Miell, & D., MacDonald (Eds.), Musical identities (pp. 1–20). Oxford University Press.

Hellqvist, K. (2022a). Circular bowing, cyclical work. VIS Nordic Journal for Artistic Research, 8. https://www.en.visjournal.nu/theme-of-rules-and-alternatives

Hellqvist, K. (2022b). Solastalgia: The voicing of a fading natural resource. Seismograf Peer – Sounding Women’s Work II. DOI https://doi.org/10.48233/SEISMOGRAF2804

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