Musical Gestures Research Articles

Peculiar Attunements: Comic Opera and Enlightenment Mimesis

Peculiar Attunements: Comic Opera and Enlightenment Mimesis

Flexibility of Expressive Timing in Repeated Musical Performances.

Performances by soloists in the Western classical tradition are normally highly prepared, yet must sound fresh and spontaneous. How do musicians manage this? We tested the hypothesis that they achieve the necessary spontaneity by varying the musical gestures that express their interpretation of a piece. We examined the tempo arches produced by final slowing at the ends of phrases in performances of J. S. Bach’s No. 6 (Prelude) for solo cello (12 performances) and the Italian Concerto (Presto) for solo piano (eight performances). The performances were given by two experienced concert soloists during a short time period (3½ months for the Prelude, 2 weeks for the Presto) after completing their preparations for public performance. We measured the tempo of each bar or half-bar, and the stability of tempo across performances (difference of the tempo of each bar/half bar from each of the other performances). There were phrase arches for both tempo and stability with slower, less stable tempi at beginnings and ends of phrases and faster, more stable tempi mid-phrase. The effects of practice were complex. Tempo decreased overall with practice, while stability increased in some bars and decreased in others. One effect of practice may be to imbue well-learned, automatic motor sequences with freshness and spontaneity through cognitive control at phrase boundaries where slower tempi and decreased stability provide opportunities for slower cognitive processes to modulate rapid automatic motor sequences.

Go To Hell: Towards a Gesture-Based Compositional Practice

This paper discusses musical gesture from an understanding of musical perception as embodied and enactive, also drawing specifically on Denis Smalley’s [(2007). Space-form and the acousmatic image. Organised Sound, 12(1), 35–58] analysis of performed space. I will provide examples of how choreographies (performed by musicians, with and without their instruments), new music (for Vietnamese and Western instruments), installations, and video art have all been drawn from analysis of gesture in Östersjö’s performance of the guitar composition Toccata Orpheus by Rolf Riehm [1990. Toccata Orpheus. Munich: Ricordi]. In Riehm’s piece, the bodily action of the performer is treated as an intentional compositional parameter and the notated structure thus generates a specific choreography in performance. In Go To Hell, this approach is taken further towards the development of a gesture-based compositional practice, where composition is understood, not as the organisation of sound objects, but as the structuring of gestural-sonic objects [Godøy, R. I. (2006). Gestural-sonorous objects: Embodied extensions of schaeffer’s conceptual apparatus. Organised Sound, 11(2), 149–157; Östersjö, S. (2008). SHUT UP ‘N’ PLAY! Negotiating the musical work (PhD thesis). Lund University, Malmö].

The Creative Process of Sculpting the Air by Jesper Nordin: Conceiving and Performing a Concerto for Conductor with Live Electronics

Exformation Trilogy is a mixed music triptych that the Swedish composer Jesper Nordin plans to complete by 2017 using his Gestrument application. Sculpting the Air—the first piece of this cycle—is conceived as a concerto for conductor with live electronics. The composer’s work addresses the issue of the frequent lack of relationship between musicians and real-time electronic processing. In this piece, he employs two motion sensors, allowing the conductor to trigger sound files or to process instrumental sounds gesturally. We attended almost every work session during the production of the piece at Institute for Research and Communication in Acoustics/Music, and therefore collected a substantial amount of ethnographic data, in order to focus both on the creative process of the piece and the musical practice of the conductor in such a technological environment. This paper deals with the evolution of the setup and the composer’s writing strategies—including the notation of musical gestures, the compromises between technological and human constraints, and the conductor’s learning and performance of the piece.

Gesture-Technology Interactions in Contemporary Music

Although gesture has always been an essential component of music, the study of musical gesture, particularly in its literal interpretation as bodily gesture and movement, has only emerged as a sign...

О ритмической природе музыкального жеста: к постановке проблемы

The predominance of rhythm as an organizing and forming factor in the musical art of the twentieth century is obvious. Perhaps this was due to the desire of modern man to reflect in an effective motor and emotionally music swiftness of human society. New rhythmic conception of the musical art of the twentieth century composers demanded that the search for new ways of impacting the audience, a new musical language, new means of expression. We can say that expressive musical gesture (a gesture, through the musical embodiment), various forms of movement that can cause the most immediate reaction of the listener, are one of the methods to ensure adequate perception and understanding of contemporary music the listening audience. In a number of musical styles, from the second half of the twentieth century, the use of musical gesture is the best way to disclose the essence of the artistic design. Beyond the musical gesture concept is difficult to define the specifics of the works of such composers as Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, Brian Ferneyhough, Helmut Lachenmann, Morton Feldman and others. Nevertheless, the theory of musical gesture is still in its infancy. The concept of musical gesture is interpreted very flexible. At the same time I would like to note that attempting to define what is a musical gesture and what is its role in music, you need to pay attention to the following aspects: 1 ) the musical gesture a phenomenon which manifests itself at the level of design and compositional embodiment of a musical work; 2) musical gesture manifests itself on the level of performance, as it is performing the gesture is energy, generating in some cases form; 3 ) musical gesture manifests itself at the level of perception, as the listening emotion, according to some modern scholars, such as Vincent Milberg, Ralph Phifer, Jose Vongard should be realized as a gesture that can pass the value of a musical fabric element works. The close interaction of music and movement at the level of deep psychophysical relations proved by modern science. This allows you to freely transfer one art form to another: the music in choreography and dance, a certain type of movement, gesture in the musical embodiment. Moreover, according to some composers, certain forms of movement can become an impetus for the development of creative ideas to deduce the form, fill expressive gestures, figures (B. Ferneyhough ). These ideas are addressed to the problem of interaction between music and movement are relevant and very promising in the light of modern musicology, music psychology, music theory, the theory of playing, etc. This proves the necessity of a deep scientific study of the problem and its attendant ideas related to musical gesture, gestural music, musical composition born of pulses of different types of movement and gesture.

Spontaneous Composition for Screen: linear and non-linear improvisation for instruments and electronics

This research examines non-traditional music performance and composition practices utilising experimental electronic and acoustic performance strategies for scoring films. It looks at innovation within screen sound by examining how technological practices, both innovative and more established, are facilitating and shaping the creative processes of screen composition and sound design. At the forefront of this research is taking into account new forms of electronic and musician interface to the improvisation process when composing in real time, which includes controllers that manipulate sound in real time, musical gesture and notation for live performance, and new compositional structure as pertains to dramatic flow when working to picture.

C. P. E. BACH ‘IN TORMENTIS’: GOUT PAIN AND BODY LANGUAGE IN THE FANTASIA IN A MAJOR, h278 (1782)

ABSTRACTIn his Magazin der Musik, Carl Friedrich Cramer reported that C. P. E. Bach's Fantasia in A major, h278 (1782), was composed during the agonies of gout. Tapping into a reported epidemic of this patrician malady among men of letters, Cramer's anecdote invoked rich associations of sequestered suffering, withdrawal from public life, the pleasures of the table, genius, sexual (im)potency and humour. Reflecting contemporary nerve-based theories of sensation, Cramer aligned different types of physical and mental pain with specific musical gestures. In so doing, he did more than indulge his hermeneutic imagination: he suggested a connection between Bach's solo keyboard music and the experience of embodiment. The seemingly abstract gestures of improvisation were linked dialectically to the corporeal. Behind the specifics of Cramer's reading is a conviction that this kind of music ‘knows’ about the body, as well as the mind, and that it moves between gestures suggestive of thinking, speaking, feeling and corporeal sensation. Analysis of the fantasia, and Bach's letters, supports Cramer's reading.

Viola Caipira: criação e reflexão estética baseadas na livre improvisação, no timbre e no gesto musical

O autor desta pesquisa desenvolve um trabalho artístico na área de criação musical a partir de uma aproximação entre a viola caipira, desde seu contexto performático e sócio-cultural, e o universo da música contemporânea, particularmente, por meio de estudos sobre a improvisação, timbre e gesto. Este trabalho tem por finalidade apresentar novas possibilidades sonoras e composicionais para a viola caipira, de modo a ampliar o seu repertório. Desse modo, o autor se vale de uma investigação de elementos característicos do repertório tradicional da viola caipira – tanto do ponto de vista de seus materiais musicais como dos resultados sonoros gestuais mais idiomáticos –, do estudo de processos de escrita e da pesquisa de técnicas estendidas na performance deste instrumento e de outros afins na música atual. Estas atividades serão complementadas com a livre improvisação servindo como reservatório de materiais experimentais a serem desenvolvidos durante a composição. Posteriormente, será elaborado um memorial, com detalhamento das decisões relevantes tomadas durante o processo compositivo, bem como uma reflexão sobre as escolhas estéticas, gestos e técnicas utilizadas.

Musical Bodies: Corporeality, Emergent Subjectivity, and Improvisational Spaces

Interactive improvisational musical spaces (which is to say, nearly all musical spaces) involve affective relations among bodies: between the bodies of human performers, between performers and active listeners, between the sonic "bodies" that comprise the multiple overlapping events that constitute a musical performance’s unfolding. Music scholarship tends to focus on either music’s sonic materialities (the sensible; what can be heard) or the cultural resonances that locate in and through music (the political or hermeneutic; how meaning is inscribed in and for a listening subject). An embodied turn, however, has recently been manifesting, bringing music scholarship into communication with feminist theory, queer theory, and approaches that foreground subjectivity and embodiment. Exemplary in this area are works by Naomi Cumming (who asks a critical question, “does the self form the sound, or the sound the self?;” Cumming 7), Suzanne Cusick, Marion Guck, Fred Maus, and Susan McClary. All of these scholars, in various ways, thematise the performative—what it feels like to make or experience music, and what effect that making or experiencing has on subject-formation. All of these authors strive to foreground the role of the performer and performativity in the context of the extended Western art music tradition. While each makes persuasive, significant points, my contention in this paper is that improvised music is a more fruitful starting place for thinking about embodiment and the co-constitutive relationship between performer and sound. That is, while (nearly) all music is improvised to a greater or lesser degree, the more radical contexts, in which paths are being selected and large-scale shapes drawn in the “heat of the moment,” can bring these issues into stark relief and serve as more productive entry points for thinking through crucial questions of embodiment, perspective, identity, and emergent meaning.

Judith Weir's Instrumental Music as Description

Abstract This study explores Judith Weir's abstract descriptive technique in her instrumental music, Distance and Enchantment (1988) for piano quartet and Musicians Wrestle Everywhere for ten instruments (1994). Folksongs and a location used and described in the music, respectively, are interpreted and "produced" through musical characters and mood. In most cases musical characters and gestures have a tendency to associate musical motion to arouse images. The decisions, ideas and styles in these compositions may be applied to works in other genres and her later works, as well.

Nationalizing the Kujawiak and Constructions of Nostalgia in Chopin's Mazurkas

The traditional musicological perspective on Chopin's slow, minor-key mazurkas and mazurka sections—that he modeled these episodes on the kujawiak, a Polish folk dance from Kujawy region — is plagued by contradictory statements. Re-evaluation of source material reveals that the kujawiak, as it is understood in relation to Chopin's mazurkas, is largely a creation of Polish nationalism after Chopin's time. In Chopin's own time, the term kujawiak is used only sporadically and appears to be interchangeable with mazur; by the end of the nineteenth century, however, the kujawiak becomes an important marker of Polishness for which authors offer specific but widely diverging musical characterizations. It is around this time that writers also begin to emphasize the kujawiak's impact on Chopin's mazurkas, forging a persistent link between this imagined “national dance” and his compositions. In place of these vague and conflicting constructs, it is proposed that Chopin used the slow mazurka—the kind widely but anachronistically called the kujawiak—to summon nostalgia for the spatially and temporally distant (and mythical) Poland, through musical styles and gestures that include reminiscence and allusion; auditory distancing; disruptions of form and genre; and surface distortions. Nostalgia as a cultural and medical concept also provides a prism through which his contemporaries perceived Chopin's illness, his experience in exile, and his music.

Method for Analyzing Gestural Communication in Musical Groups

Musical performances provide a rich context for studying complex spatial and embodied modes of group learning. This article proposes a framework for analyzing gesture in musical performances to highlight the ways musicians' movements reflect and promote their emerging and changing conceptions of a piece of music. The constructs of expressive musical gesture (at the individual level of analysis) and group expressive musical gesture (at the collective level) are used to analyze a series of five sequential performances of a musical passage by a string quartet during rehearsal. The analysis identifies three functions of embodied gesture for score interpretation: (1) gestures served as a tool for group interpretation in passages that had previously been pointed to by verbal exchanges, (2) gestures served to fine-tune the location and enactment of dynamic markings in the score, and (3) group expressive gestures in the final “take” of the rehearsal incorporated group expressive gestures from other takes, constituting a negotiated set of score interpretations.

Contrasting Approaches: The Continued Relevance of Pre-recorded Live Electronics in Australian Music

As new technology has taken effect over the decades since the earliest electronic music was created, ‘real-time’ rather than ‘pre-recorded’ technologies have largely come to dominate the medium of ‘live electronics’. Yet despite the rapid developments of real-time and particularly ‘interactive’ technologies, many composers continue to use various forms of pre-recorded electronics. This article offers some explanations as to why this medium is still relevant for many composers and discusses a number of live electronic works written by the author and others. The advantages of pre-recorded, live electronic works and possibilities for allowing the performer(s) various levels of temporal freedom to interpret certain musical phrases and gestures freely is also discussed as an integral part of this medium.

Two Poems

Two Poems Adam Scheffler (bio) The New Me The moon is the best tombstoneI know, the least horrible one,and the sun wants toburn everything down, so it’s only for the greatfrigid distances of spacethat we survive at all. Underneath the letters of each stop signyou find an inscrutablediamond-image that bleats andtells you it’s too late. What sad songs lurk in the vacuumed carpet.What silky math tricked youinto that binary dead-alive. But do you ever have that day whenyou rise up in a strange room,and all the threads hooked into youvanish, a sail without a boatlifting up in a rustling likepigeons off an old man’s body? When a man sets his own houseon fire with a lighter and breath freshenerhe’s not trying to speed up time,he’s trying to molt. [End Page 612] So too when I’m barefoot sprayingWindex into the dark of amplifiersor menacing birds by flappingmy ugly stick-arms, I’m trying to brandish a new melike a toy pistol straight fromthe factory, ripped from the packaging. Bang! says the little white flag.You’re somebody else. Here The parking lot lights shinesuccessively in on the taxidermizedwhite tiger and badger and puma locked in their advanced positionsof fury, of formaldehyde,with marbles laid over their scooped out eye-spaces, orbiting the bedsteadof the old hunter-man who moved intothis nursing home totally healthy to make catcalls andsob to the nurses about his lovefor himself. Here you must followa quarter mile of neonsigns to the egress where the healthier old wanderback and forth along glass corridorsbiting their nails, [End Page 613] their various ailments containedperfectly by bodies which arethemselves contained perfectly by the building shaped to their wanderingslike the grains inside a rainsticksliding forth, sliding back. It is not really a home butyou will never leave this place whereyou peer from the high one-way mirror into an outsidewhere the pigeons and onehefty bag line a telephone pole and lean off intoa distance you cannot seeinto, into which they fling their raptor-bodies, tinybut with such deft hungerlike a pro unhooking all the buttons from a cocktail waitress’shirt, in a single musical gesture—like notes—as evening unravels and spills its stale, defunct beautyover that empty lot, full oftree shadows, and stains us with its orange and pinks whose promiseof romance keeps everyone aliveand unfulfilled. [End Page 614] Adam Scheffler Adam Scheffler is the author of A Dog’s Life, Jacar Press, 2016, which was selected by Denise Duhamel as the winner of the Jacar Press Full-Length Poetry Book Contest. He grew up in California, received his MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and is currently working on finishing his Ph.D. in English at Harvard. His poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Rattle, North American Review, Colorado Review and many other journals. Copyright © 2016 Adam Scheffler

“I Am a Manufacturer of Impressions.”

Abstract The collection of statements by Zbigniew Bargielski (born in 1937) describing his own oeuvre consists of texts in various forms. These include: the composer’s commentaries on his works printed in concert programmes accompanying the world premieres of his compositions; short notes in the scores; occasional reviews of compositions; the rare interviews where an open discussion of problems related to his music inspired the composer to comment; and the composer’s personal notes from different periods of his artistic activity. Valuable reference material also includes speeches by Zbigniew Bargielski recorded on audio and video devices, e.g. event documentation. Zbigniew Bargielski’s self-commentaries deal with various aspects of musical language: structure, morphology, syntax, phonology, expression and meaning - the latter mentioned specifically in the context of the artist-audience relationship. Additionally, self-reflection includes the definition of aesthetic preferences and the composer’s artistic “worldview” which determines the choice of ideas and the means of their musical implementation. Moreover, Bargielski considers the possibility of a “transmission” - via musical gestures - of the sphere of his own experiences. In his notes from the recent months, he attempts to describe the transformations of his own musical language, which is of special importance considering the almost sixty-year-long period of his artistic work.

An analysis of performance practices in African American gospel music: rhythm, lyric treatment and structures in improvisation and accompaniment

AbstractAfrican American gospel music is a unique and distinctive idiom that has had a pervasive influence upon the development of contemporary popular music. While there are now many sources available on African American gospel music, the focus of the vast majority of these studies is on the sociological, historical and stylistic aspects of the genre, rather than on identifying and codifying specific musical characteristics and performance practices. This paper extends the discussion of gospel singing techniques in Andrew Legg's 2010 article ‘A taxonomy of musical gesture in African American gospel music’ (Popular Music, 29/1) by examining some of the key performance practices associated with rhythm and lyric treatment in African American gospel music, as well as common structures in gospel music improvisation and accompaniment. Through analysis of selected recordings, this research proposes a codified frame of reference for the definition and discussion of terminologies and performance practice techniques inherent within African American gospel music.

The effect of musical practice on gesture/sound pairing.

Learning to play a musical instrument is a demanding process requiring years of intense practice. Dramatic changes in brain connectivity, volume, and functionality have been shown in skilled musicians. It is thought that music learning involves the formation of novel audio visuomotor associations, but not much is known about the gradual acquisition of this ability. In the present study, we investigated whether formal music training enhances audiovisual multisensory processing. To this end, pupils at different stages of education were examined based on the hypothesis that the strength of audio/visuomotor associations would be augmented as a function of the number of years of conservatory study (expertise). The study participants were violin and clarinet students of pre-academic and academic levels and of different chronological ages, ages of acquisition, and academic levels. A violinist and a clarinetist each played the same score, and each participant viewed the video corresponding to his or her instrument. Pitch, intensity, rhythm, and sound duration were matched across instruments. In half of the trials, the soundtrack did not match (in pitch) the corresponding musical gestures. Data analysis indicated a correlation between the number of years of formal training (expertise) and the ability to detect an audiomotor incongruence in music performance (relative to the musical instrument practiced), thus suggesting a direct correlation between knowing how to play and perceptual sensitivity.

Realizing Musical Gestures with the Computer: Paradigms and Problems

Realizing Musical Gestures with the Computer: Paradigms and Problems

Improvisation et processus compositionnel dans la genèse de Fenêtre Ovale de Karl Naëgelen

Improvisation and Compositional Process in Karl Naëgelen’s Fenêtre Ovale
 This paper is centred around the analysis of the creative process underlying the genesis of a recent work of music by French composer Karl Naëgelen, Fenêtre Ovale (2011), written in collaboration with two free improvisers active on the Parisian scene, Ève Risser (piano) and Joris Rühl (clarinet). This piece is remarkable in that, contrary to the vast majority of works composed in a so-called “comprovisation” framework, where the interaction between the composed and the improvised elements essentially takes place during the moments of performance, its score never actually requires any act of improvisation from its performers: the relation between improvisation and composition is thus entirely implicit, underlying the creative process itself rather than its product. 
 Using the work’s various sketches, and the numerous improvisations realized by the two musicians over the course of the composition of Fenêtre Ovale, I show that improvisation played three distinct roles in the creative process: 
 1. A role of stimulation: the improvisation enables the generation of new compositional ideas;
 2. An inspirational role: the ideas generated by improvisation are transferred, more or less directly, in the compositional setting;
 3. A role of simulation: the improvisation is used to simulate a certain musical organization and/or to validate or invalidate a given compositional choice.
 But improvisation is also embedded in the compositional project itself at a deeper level: improvisation is indeed used as a model for the composition, which seeks to emulate some of its most notable aesthetic properties. This is mainly done by importing into the score some of the specific instrumental and musical gestures used by the musicians in an improvisational setting. However, this attempt to absorb improvisational gestures into composition is not straightforward: it reveals some of the fundamental differences existing between the compositional gesture and the improviser's gestures. The paper thus concludes by discussing the intrinsic paradoxes and tensions that lie at the heart of such a project.
 
 Improvisation et processus compositionnel dans la genèse de Fenêtre Ovale de Karl Naëgelen
 Cet article s’intéresse au processus de création d’une œuvre récente de Karl Naëgelen, Fenêtre Ovale (2011), qui a été composée en relation étroite avec un duo d’improvisateurs, Ève Risser (piano) et Joris Rühl (clarinette). Cette œuvre est remarquable en ce que, contrairement à la plupart des projets musicaux mêlant composition et improvisation, la confrontation de l’improvisation et de la composition ne se joue pas dans le moment de la restitution de l’œuvre mais bien en amont de la performance, lors de la gestation et de l’élaboration même de l’œuvre.
 En m’appuyant sur les multiples esquisses de l’œuvre, accompagnées des enregistrements audio des diverses séances de travail entre le compositeur et les improvisateurs, je montre que l’improvisation a pu occuper trois fonctions essentielles tout au long du processus compositionnel: 
 1. Une fonction de stimulation: l’improvisation permet la génération de nouvelles idées compositionnelles;
 2. Une fonction d’inspiration: les matières et idées musicales apparues dans le temps de l’improvisation se trouvent remobilisées, de diverses manières, dans l’écriture de l’œuvre;
 3. Une fonction de simulation: l’improvisation vient compléter un état encore lacunaire de la partition ou fournir de toute pièce une représentation sonore d’un processus formel encore indéterminé, afin de permettre au compositeur de valider ou d’invalider un certain nombre de choix.
 Mais si l’improvisation est au cœur du processus compositionnel de Fenêtre Ovale, c’est également parce que Karl Naëgelen a cherché à capturer certaines des propriétés les plus caractéristiques de l’improvisation, et à ainsi créer l’illusion d’une musique qui s’invente dans le temps de sa performance. Cela se fait principalement en incorporant dans la partition un certain nombre de gestes instrumentaux et musicaux spécifiquement utilisés par les musiciens dans un contexte d’improvisation. Toutefois, cette absorption de l’improvisation par la composition ne va pas sans difficulté; c’est donc par l’examen des limites et paradoxes inhérents à une telle démarche que se conclut l’article, en faisant apparaître toute la tension qui peut exister entre, d’un côté, le geste du compositeur qui vise la généralité et la reproductibilité et, de l’autre, le geste de l’improvisateur toujours profondément contextuel, dynamique et idiosyncrasique.