Music reflects subjectivity and identity: that idea is now deeply ingrained in both musicology and popular media commentary. The study of music across cultures and practices often addresses the enactment of subjectivity “in” music – how music expresses or represents “an” individual or “a” group. However, a sense of selfhood is also formed and continually reformed through musical practices, not least performance. How does this take place? How might the work of practitioners revea...

The concept of assemblage has emerged in recent decades as a central tool for describing, analysing, and transforming dynamic systems in a variety of disciplines. Coined by Deleuze and Guattari in relation to different fields of knowledge, human practices, and nonhuman arrangements, “assemblage” is variously applied today in the arts, philosophy, and human and social sciences, forming links not only between disciplines but also between critical thought and artistic practice. Machinic Asse...

The practices and perception of music creation have evolved with the cultural, social and technological contexts of music and musicians. But musical authorship, in its many technical and aesthetic modes, remains an important component of music culture. Musicians are increasingly called on to share their experience in writing. However, cultural imperatives to account for composition as knowledge production and to make claims for its uniqueness inhibit the development of discourse in both exper...

“Truth happens to an idea.” So wrote William James in 1907; and twenty-four years later John Dewey argued that artistic experience entailed a process of “doing and undergoing.” But what do these ideas have to do with music, or with research conducted in and through music—that is, with “artistic research”? In this collection of essays, fourteen very different authors respond with distinct and challenging perspectives. Some report on their own experiments and experiences; some off...

In Toekomstmuziek bracht neurowetenschapper en jazzmuzikant Artur C. Jaschke zijn inzichten over de relatie tussen improvisatie, de hersenen en muziek voor het eerst naar een breder publiek, en in Mind the Music doet hij dat nu ook voor een Engelstalig publiek. Zijn kennis van muzikale cognitie en neurologie komt samen met een toegankelijke, inspirerende beschrijving van ons oer-menselijk vermogen tot improvisatie, een vermogen dat zijn weerklank vindt in elk aspect van de samenleving. Hoewel...

Oriental Jazz Improvisation: Microtonality and Harmony is a comprehensive study on setting Arabic, Turkish, and Northern Indian scales and modes into context and blending and employing them in improvisation. It contains about two dozen of the mentioned music cultures' scales and modes each as well as their transpositions. Scales and modes which any musician interested in South-Western Asian or Northern Indian music should be familiar with. It moreover contains numerous scales and modes of oth...

When one realises that thousands of liturgical chants were transmitted over more than three centuries in which there were no accurate means of melodic notation, the core repertoire of Gregorian plainchant has been transmitted with an astonishing degree of uniformity.

On the other hand, these chants are reflections of a living liturgy, and thus reflections of their particular surroundings: any monastic or collegial environment could develop its own conventions in relation to what only seems to...

Futures of the Contemporary explores different notions and manifestations of “the contemporary” in music, visual arts, art theory, and philosophy. In particular, the authors in this collection of essays scrutinise the role of artistic research in critical and creative expressions of contemporaneity. When distinguished from “the contemporaneous” of a given historical time, “the contemporary” becomes a crucial concept, promoting or excluding objects and practices according to their ...

The process of practising is intrinsic to musical creativity. Practising may primarily be thought of as technical, but it is often also musically meaningful, including elements of interpretation, improvisation, and/or composition. The practice room can be a space in which to explore a field of creative possibilities; a place to experiment and to refine ideas.

To date, the literature on practice has been primarily pedagogical and psychological. Little attention is paid to the significance of ...

To perform a musical score implies the transformation of a symbolically coded text into vibrant sound. In Performing by the Book? a carefully selected cadre of artist-researchers dissects this delicate act in critical ways. Offering first-hand insights into the notational, structural and interpretative challenges faced by musicians in dealing with texts of all kinds, the chapters traverse the spectrum between the Middle Ages and the age of Stockhausen. In a harmonious blend of scholarly allur...