Research group members will present their individual sub-projects:
Arnulf Mattes, Hilde H.Sveen, Torleif Torgersen, Signe Bakke, Liv Elise
Nordskog, Njål Sparbo, Einar Røttingen, Knut Vaage, John Ehde and
Ricardo Odriozola

The seminar will be in English.

Abstract of project description:
This project aims to widen the area of what we can express, demonstrate
and talk about in the performer’s search for expressive means when
transmitting a musical composition’s expressive intentions into
performances. Through the study of scores and relevant sources focusing
on personal artistic reflections and intersubjective exchanges within a
research group, the project seeks to get new insight into performative
processes and make a contribution to developing and renewing ways we
express ourselves as musicians in our music, and how we speak about our
music within and outside music institutions.

Norwegian composers
The selected compositions are by 20th century and contemporary Norwegian
composers within the categories piano, voice and strings. The main group
of composers – Harald Sæverud, Geirr Tveitt, Fartein Valen, Klaus Egge,
Ludvig Irgens-Jensen and Morten Eide Pedersen – represent stylistic
diversity and artistic individuality. At the same time, they epitomize
the search for new aesthetic directions in the 20th and 21st centuries,
situated in a Norwegian, cultural context. Their music is still about
to establish performance traditions, yet hardly any artistic research
has been done and questions prevail as to how these composers’ styles
and expressivity could be understood and interpreted. The project’s main
aim is to gain new insight into these composers’ performance practices
through new forms of discourse within and about their art works. In
addition, the project will include a dialogue-based development of a new
composition by Knut Vaage focusing on the interactive process between
the performer and composer.

Methodological approaches
The methodological approaches have their basis in the performers’
individual working processes, within which a wide range of elements
already informs artistic practice. The research aims to show the
diversity of individual approaches and – through the mutual exchange and
interaction of members the research group – will get closer to the core
of the performative interactions and be able to convey their individual
experiences in a comprehensible language. This includes the exploration
and recognition of metaphors, images, and analogies, as well as
practical, non-verbal means of expression used to explain questions of
expressivity. Further, this implies to experiment with new ways and the
creation of new, possible models and methods for how interaction and
dialogue between performers can (un-) settle individual expressive
practices, based on a deeper understanding for the contingencies of
performative situations, sites, and styles.

The research will include the investigation of concert performances in
different venues and examine recording situations with interacting
musicians, sound technician and producer as performative acts in order
to discern in what way expressivity and the choice of expressive means
is affected by different contexts in relation to artistic strategies and
results.