City Research Online

Abstract

Performing Around Music is a portfolio-based PhD thesis within the academic framework of music composition, addressing researchers and colleagues of contemporary music and experimental music theatre. In relation to the seven works of my portfolio spanning 2018 to 2023, I investigate the act of playing music as a means of composition. Through the lens of my artistic practice, and referring to the works of colleagues, I explore performativity in relation to sound and music. The writing oscillates between phenomenological abstraction and an embodied perspective, investigating the act of playing music within the broad field between sonic phenomena and human activity. Five terms from the world of music serve as fixed points for capturing this spectrum. Encircling the notions of studio, instrument, format, musician , and acoustics , the thesis approaches the act of playing music in the logics of site, production and sensoriality, in doing so revealing different agencies, as well as format-specific dramaturgies. This thesis suggests to encounter music playing as an autopoiesis , in which the functional aspects of performativity and the presence of sound mutually legitimise, address and (re-)produce each other. In conjunction with the portfolio, a compositional practice is thus presented that expands upon and delineates the multitude of understandings of what it means to perform around music.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	M Music and Books on Music > M Music N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR N Fine Arts > NX Arts in general
Departments:	School of Communication & Creativity > Department of Performing Arts School of Communication & Creativity > School of Communication & Creativity Doctoral Theses Bayes Business School > Faculty of Finance Doctoral Theses

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