An Introduction
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T The Opener - sharing the performer’s process is a one-year artistic research pilot project (March 2024 - March 2025) funded by strategic funds at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Music and Design, University of Bergen. It is part of the Grieg Academy Research Group for Performance and Interpretation (GAFFI) together with external members from The Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava.
The term opener can in this project proposal symbolize a three-fold meaning connected to the music performance field. This project seeks to:
- See the performer as an opener of musical meaning in a performance (interpretation of musical intentions in scores and improvisation)
- Challenge ourselves as performers as openers that share his/her artistic work (getting insight into the creative process and methods)
- Finding openers as tools to reveal and show the creative process of performers (ways of showing the artistic process)
As a background and starting point for the the Opener, Henck Borgdorff’s definition of Artistic Research (hereafter AR) in the article The Debate on Research in the Arts sets an arena for a discussion on central topics in AR:
“Art practice qualifies as research if its purpose is to expand our knowledge and understanding by conducting an original investigation in and through art objects and creative processes. Art research begins by addressing questions that are pertinent in the research context and in the art world. Researchers employ experimental and hermeneutic methods that reveal and articulate the tacit knowledge that is situated and embodied in specific artworks and artistic processes. Research processes and outcomes are documented and disseminated in an appropriate manner to the research community and the wider public.”
Questions
What does this imply for AR and artistic reflection within the music performance field? Some questions derived from Borgdorff’s text:
- What characterizes our art practice as performers and what kind of knowledge and understanding are we talking about?
- What characterizes our creative processes as performers?
- How do we as performers employ experimental and hermeneutical methods in our work?
- What is tacit knowledge for us as performers and what can we say and articulate (verbally) and what can we show (demonstrate practice)?
- How can we as performers document and disseminate research processes and outcomes in an appropriate manner? What is appropriate manners?
Background
Artistic Research (AR) and education at the Grieg Academy:
The Grieg Academy (GA) has since 1995, when it became been part of the University of Bergen (and in 2017 organized as part of the KMD faculty for Fine Art, Music and Design) developed AR for performers and composers on Masters (MA) and Ph.D. levels in the form of MA’s Project Work and Ph.D’s Artistic Reflection component. In 2023, Project Work 1-4 was introduced as an elective for third- and fourth- year Bachelor (BA) students after the model of MA with the option of choosing up to four projects (over four semesters). A new forum for performers and composers called “Musikerforum” for first year BA students has been introduced in 2024-25 as a result of the evaluation of the BA program in music performance and composition in 2022. An aim is to create a community early in the program that encourages reflection on musical and musicianship-related matters, individually and with one another. “Musikerforum” contains a variety of topics that are relevant for all musicians such as basic awareness of physiology, musical consciousness - how we work as musicians, group improvisations/ compositions to develop free creativity and listening skills, meetings with free-lancers and music organizations, introduction to artistic research.
The Opener is an AR project that can be seen as wanting to make a contribution to this larger educational context of developing a greater awareness of AR among the performance students.
Documentation of artistic reflection:
The idea of artistic reflection (as an artistic equivalent to the scientific thesis) and what it can be and should contain has been discussed since the beginning of AR in the 1990s. The so-called “Norwegian Model” is reflected in the requirement for artistic reflection in the regulations for Artistic Ph.D. at The University of Bergen, which states “the artistic reflection shall be documented in the form of submitted material”, and at the same time opens for that “the candidate chooses the medium and form for the reflection component and for any other documentation”. Many choose to document their reflection as written text only, (can resemble a traditional scientific thesis format). Some are also experimenting with different forms (video, different styles of texts, sound, creative/experimental layout, etc.).
The Opener sought to experiment and try out different ways of reflecting within music performance.
Oral language:
There is also the question of oral and written language. Performers are generally more oral in their communication and the academic world is traditionally based on written texts. There is reason to ask how written AR texts on performance are received in the performance community. Are they read? Are they experienced as relevant? Does the style of language communicate? Are there other ways of communicating that could be more relevant and closer to the performing world? Can we build on the strong oral tradition within the performing field and develop more dialogue-based AR-documentation through informal forms such as conversations, interviews, etc.? Can we find new models and strategies for documenting AR within the performance field?
The Opener sought to try out different models of presenting and documenting its reflections and activities.
Teaching as a way of reflecting:
One of the most common exchanges of performative knowledge happens in the one-to-one instrumental teaching situation (or in an instrumental class situation). A large amount of performative knowledge and understanding can occur as an oral and spontaneous dialogue and interaction between teacher and student with practical demonstrations on the instrument. Every instrumental lesson is different and unique in that the teaching approach and methods are spontaneously adjusted to meet the needs of that specific event. In this way, instrumental lessons can be seen as highly experimental. New insights are rarely documented beyond the happening of an instrumental lesson. (Sometimes the student writes down something at the lesson or after in order to remember or symbols/words are written into the scores). If we are going to develop a stronger relevance and richer content within AR in the performance field, we have to consider the strong and intertwined relationship between the performing teacher’s own artistic work with what is happening in the teaching situation.
Several of the sub-projects experimented with open teaching sessions as a laboratory for exchange of ideas, developing questions and ways of inquiring into performative issues in a dialogue between teachers and students.
Christian Stene’s project “Language in Artistic Practice - Examining the use of oral language in rehearsal and teaching situations within the music performances field”
investigated how performers use language in the teaching situation and documented Master Class sessions in addition to interviews with the teachers (including himself) at the Grieg Academy and at the Academy in Bratislava.
In the joint activity World Café, the research group was joined by students at the Academy in Bratislava (and later at the Grieg Academy) to form group conversations and dialogues on central topics in the project: sharing, language, artistic practice and relations.
Einar Røttingen’s project “Musical Spaces and Images: Finding a New Approach to Performing Edvard Grieg’s 19 Norwegian Folk Tunes op.66” tried a hybrid solution combining a text of the artistic process to be read by the piano students at the Grieg Academy as a prerequisite to listening to a lecture demonstration, showing the main points described in the text.
Ricardo Odriozola’s Back to Basics was an investigation of a set of principles that can apply to violin performance that can give positive results for a violin performer. It contained a series of workshop sessions that resulted in a text and videos of the process.
Signe Bakke’s and Hilde Sveen’s “Relations - A Duo-Workshop-Project”
chose to collaborate in a series of teaching situations with duos of voice and piano students, where both could feel free to teach across the instrumental disciplines.
Interpretation, performance practice and the relationship between composer – performer:
Several of the sub-projects deal with the composer-performer relationship and questions of performance practice and interpretation:
Sergej Tchirkov’s Ph.D. project “Co-creative Virtuosity” seeks to challenge the conventional understanding of virtuosity in music performance and proposes a paradigm shift towards a co-creative approach that redefines the roles of composer, performer, instrument, and score within the creative process.
Einar Røttingen’s project “Musical Spaces and Images: Finding a New Approach to Performing Edvard Grieg’s 19 Norwegian Folk Tunes op.66” investigates how the pianist can find a new and fresh artistic approach to this less-know opus inspired by creating “musical spaces” and the 20th century sound world of the American composer George Crumb.
Magdaléna Bajuszová’s project “In the Name of Style or How (not) to Play Rachmaninov”, challenges questions of performance styles through seeing the old as new and the new as old in works by Rachmaninov and contemporary Slovak composer Ilja Zeljenka,
Martin Krajčo’ s project “Bardenklänge, op. 13 – Interpreting and the Creative Process of an Early-romantic Cycle for Solo Guitar by J. K. Mertz” investigates sonoristic and expressive performance options of the guitar and creating an environment of intimacy inspired by the early Romantic period.
Diana Galakhova’s Ph.D. project “Rediscovering Franz Schubert through the pianos of his time” revisits Schubert’s piano repertoire through the prism of Viennese fortepianos to create a greater understanding of Schubert’s poetical language and performance practice.
Artistic discourse:
The project has several contributions to relevant artistic discourses. It seeks to:
- Develop meeting points for artistic dialogue and a sharing of performative processes within a performative and artistic environment.
- Show ways of how tacit knowledge can be expressed by combining language and artistic demonstration.
- Show how performers work in different ways and how different sources, experiences and knowledge inform artistic practice.
On a national level, The Opener is a continuation of the The Norwegian National Academy’s (NMH) AR project “The Reflective Musician” (2016) Research Catalogue - an international database for artistic researchwith topics such as how analysis can help inform interpretation issues, and “(Un-)settling Sites and Styles: in search of new expressive means” (GA-UiB. 2021) Research Catalogue - an international database for artistic researchwith focus on the intersubjective collaboration of a research group on issues of interpretation and expressive means. In the NMH project, the challenge of showing in practice on the instrument the relevance of musical analysis became apparent, raising the question: What kind of musical analysis is relevant to the performer? Can we develop a performer’s analysis? In the GA project it became natural to ask: What were the starting points, how did the projects develop along the way, and how did they end (artistic result)?
The topics of this project also belong to the international AR discourse within organisations such as AEC, EPARM, ORPHEUS Institute and many universities and colleges with AR in music and art in their educational programs. The Opener hopes to inspire the initiative to future international projects on its topics together with potential external partners.
Acknowledegments
We wish to extend our gratitude to the KMD Faculty of Fine Arts, Music and Design, University of Bergen for funding the project and to the administrative staff and participating string, piano, and voice students at the Grieg Academy.
We want to also thank our collaborative partner The Academy for Perfoming Arts in Bratislava for hosting our project activities in October 2024. Special thanks to Zuzana Buchová Holičková for following up the practicle and organisational sides of the collaboration. She was also responsible for initiating and organising the «World Café» workshop in Bratislava (later repeated at the Grieg Academy at the final project conference). This workshop proved to be an important part of the project. (see her text on the World Café method).
Special thanks also to Bente Elisabeth Finserås, artist and web-designer, who has followed the project in close dialogue with the group members and contributed to the documentation of the project in the Research Catalogue exposition.
We also want to thank our external contributors to our final conference: pianist Katharina Brand, Kunstuniversität Graz and Professor Mine Doğantan-Dack, University of Cambridge, UK.
Activities in The Opener project
- Many internal meetings in the research group (and with artist/designer Bente Elisabeth Finserås) for planning and discussions throughout the whole project period.
- Two clarinet Master Classes with students from the Grieg Academy clarinet class supervised by research group member Christian Stene
- Series of workshops with research group members Ricardo Odriozola, Signe Bakke, Hilde Sveen together with violin, piano and voice students at the Grieg Academy, Autumn semester 2024
- Group activities at The Academy for Perfoming Arts, Bratislava October 7-9, 2024, including:
- trying out new forms of presentation of sub-projects (two and two projects in conversation).
- arranging workshops with piano (Diana Galakhova), clarinet (Christian Stene) and voice/piano students (Hilde Sveen and Signe Bakke).
- visit to Albrecht House with presentation and discussion
- arranging workshop «World Café» with students and staff at the Academy with final discussion next day.
- Presentation of The Opener project at Grieg Academy’s monthly forum and meeting place for research «GA#», December 6, 2024.
- Final project conference and concert February 13, 2025, in Gunnar Sævigs sal, Grieg Academy, including:
- trying out new presentation form with research members doing short 3-minute presentations of sub-projects and then interacting sitting in a half circle on stage with questions and comments from audience. All group members had studied each other’s projects in advance as preparation. See program for details of conference.
