My experience with this started recently, specifically during my master’s first year, even though I’ve always been drawn to contemporary music and non-conventional sonorities. This late start is due to an educational music system that is mainly anchored to an established repertoire in which these techniques are not especially included. This is extensively covered by Garth Knox (2018) in his PhD thesis Stretching the String: Embedding Pedagogical Strategies in Extended Techniques Compositions for Strings, where he outlined the necessity of composing a collection of pieces focused on the pedagogical and musical approach to the already mentioned extended techniques, and attempted to address the issue that he raises here:

“(...)players leaving the Conservatoire who come across pieces containing these techniques often have to find their own ways of tackling them, and the knowledge thus gained is not always transmitted to others. Worse still, due to a lack of experience with these techniques, many players lack the aesthetic judgment necessary for manipulating the sounds produced by these techniques, resulting in musically unsatisfactory performances of new pieces, which are then usually blamed on the deficiencies of the composer” (Knox, 2018, 8)

Although this quote is a fairly accurate representation of my own situation, instead of giving up, it increased my curiosity. I started looking for new repertoire, particularly for my instrument, the viola, discovering pieces where its role was far from the classical one; exploring by myself certain extended techniques and what I consider one of the key points in my musical career, researching Spanish contemporary music for my bachelor’s thesis.

This research was the perfect excuse to learn more about some of the most relevant and disruptive references of 20th-century art: John Cage, Dadaism, Postmodernism, Soundscape, Conceptual music, etc.

Through this research, I discovered artists, musicians, and movements that questioned the concepts of music and art. For example, which sounds can qualify as music? What is the aesthetic difference between music and noise? 

John Cage and the Spanish musicians I studied (Zaj collective and Llorenç Barber) began to focus on those elements around music that were overlooked over the years: the space of the performance, the audience, the gestures of the musicians, the organization of time, the sociological side of the music performance, etc. As a consequence of this questioning, they developed new musical experiences where a creative self-reflection of all the people involved -performers and audience- had an important role, breaking with the border between composer and audience, professional and non-professional (Lomnitz, 2022, 56). They shaped their work in accordance with a philosophy of total acceptance, including the individual reflections of the audience; each person experiences their music in a particular way, and all of them are acceptable.

I felt inspired by their approach to music and art as something that you can transfer and apply afterward to your life because that is where they find their source of inspiration. In this way, they tried to demystify art, meaning that they started to work with music as a communication tool, focusing on the phenomenological aspect,  rather than as an idealistic and rationalized issue. 

At the end, I identify with their notion of unrestricted artistic freedom, allowing themselves to explore other disciplines in order to express their already broad concept of music, as seen in the John Cage’s Theater Piece nº1, considered to be “the first authentic happening” (Ross, 2009, 456). He surrounded the audience with music, dance, paintings, performance and other elements to depict the hectic and stimuli-filled life.

In an attempt to connect what I learnt from my research and the interest in contemporary music that I mentioned above, I decided to create this project, not only for the final product itself but rather the creative process of it. 

Throughout my life, I have explored other artistic disciplines out of curiosity and also because of a family environment that encouraged me to do it. Even though I lack any formal training in either of the two fields, I currently identify more with literature and audiovisuals. However, I made the decision to approach them with the same mindset as the composers I previously mentioned: respect but an openness to experiment. In essence, I view interdisciplinarity as a personal challenge, because, in the end, every classical performer has internalized a hierarchy of an apparent subordination that suffocates, in the majority of cases, any hint of creativity. I truly believe that exploring other disciplines without this constraint and simply experimenting based on intuition and sensitivity could have a beneficial impact in my musical career.

To sum up, this project will be the perfect opportunity to begin my journey into interdisciplinarity and to utilize all the resources that the Royal Conservatoire of the Hague provides to all of its students such as composers, sonologists, strong relationship with KABK, and audiovisual equipment.