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The role played by some music scholarship in the inhibition of the performer’s voice during the twentieth century has been increasingly acknowledged in recent years. While much of this scholarship has been linked to the modernist aesthetic that prevailed for most of the previous century, the philosophy and theory that inform this demonstrate the capacity of scholarship, specifically the cultural theory of Mikhail Bakhtin, to liberate and empower rather than mute the performer’s voice. In this presentation, Dr Anne Marshman and Marcel Luxen explore the expressive, communicative and semantic implications of ‘performing’ cultural voices in music by Mozart, Beethoven, and Stravinsky. This presentation aims to promote performers’ conscious awareness of their musical voice, elements of which might well defy notation, but which can by no means be dismissed as extrinsic to music.
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Professor Bernard Lanskey (Director, Yong Siew Toh Conservatory) delivers a welcome address and framing remarks to the 2009 Performers Voice Symposium (convened by Dr Anne Marshman). As part of the address, Dr Stephen Emmerson (Griffith Univesity, Queensland Conservatorium) juxtaposes Scarlatti’s Sonata in B minor (L33) and Brahms’ Intermezzo, B Minor Op 119 Pt 1 in a revealing demonstration of how artistic practice, scholarship and critical self-reflection may be realised through the act of performance.
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Stephen Savage (Royal Northern College of Music) examines, through his own practice as a pianist, what the solo performer does, in the act of performance, to convey the content of a work to the listener. The range of treatments of sound and time are investigated, together with consideration of the role played by the performer’s body language, illusion and internally generated images. Factors deriving from innate characteristics and early training, and the distinction between personality and individuality are also explored in an attempt to account for the wide range of response to musical scores that listeners can experience when hearing performing artists.
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The performer-teacher plays a central role in conservatoires, moving between performing and teaching on a weekly, if not daily basis, and increasingly see these as interdependent activities, each informing the other and contributing to a holistic practice. In this presentation Dr Helena Gaunt (Guildhall School of Music and Drama) explores the potential of performer-teachers further. Dr Gaunt develops the idea of one-to-one tuition as creative collaboration, moving away from the traditional model of apprenticeship, and considering ways in which this form of teaching/learning may usefully come closer to forms of artistic collaborative practice.
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Developing the themes of Beyond the Score, Towards Performance and My Instrument – My Voice, Professor John Rink (University of Cambridge) discusses the ongoing role that scores can play as performances take shape over time.
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Dr Stephen Emmerson’s plenary presentation to the Performers Voice Symposium (2009) asserts that experienced performing musicians have valuable insights to offer into our understanding of music, of music-practcie, and especially of the processes of musical interpretation, that do not align comfortably with the established means and methods of musicology and that such insights need to be more widely shared and valued.
