Perspectives on Artistic Research in Music

Robert Burke, Andrys Onsman

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2017
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781978777224
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

The increasing interest in artistic research, especially in music, is throwing open doors to exciting ideas about how we generate new musical knowledge and understanding. This book examines the wide array of factors at play in innovative practice and how by treating it as research we can make new ideas more widely accessible.

Three key ideas propel the book. First, it argues that artistic research comes from inside the practice and exists in a space that accommodates both objective and subjective observation and analyses because the researcher is the practitioner. It is a space for dialogue between apparently opposing binaries: the composer and the performer, the past and the present, the fixed and the fluid, the intellectual and the intuitive, the abstract and the embodied, the prepared and the spontaneous, the enduring and the transitory, and so on. It is not so much constructed in a logical, sequential manner in the way of the scientific method of doing research but more as a "braided" space, woven from many disparate elements.

Second, the book articulates the notion that artistic research in music has its own verification procedures that need to be brought into the academy, especially in terms of the moderation of non-traditional research outputs, including the description of the criteria for allocation of research points for the purposes of data collection, as well as real world relevance and industry engagement.

Third, by way of numerous examples of original and creative music making, it demonstrates in practical terms how exploration and experimentation functions as legitimate academic research. Many of the case studies deliberately cross boundaries that were previously assumed to be rigid and definite in order to blaze new musical trails, creating new collaborations and synergies.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Section I. THEORIZING PRACTICE-BASEDARTISTIC RESEARCH
• Chapter One. Discordant Methodologies: Prioritizing Performance in Artistic Research in Music
• Chapter Two. Six Propositions on Artistic Research
• Chapter Three. Is My Performance Research?
• Chapter Four. . . . That Is the Question: The Nature and Scope of the Research Question Within Practice-Led Artistic Research
• Chapter Five. The Art of Scholarship
• Section II. LOCATING ARTISTIC RESEARCH IN UNIVERSITIES
• Chapter Six. Quantifying the Ineffable?: The University of Sydney’s 2014 Guidelines for Non-Traditional Research Outputs
• Chapter Seven. Equal, Inferior, or Different: Research Equivalence and University Attitudes to Artistic Research
• Chapter Eight. Keep Your Eye on the Prize
• Section III. ARTISTIC RESEARCH IN MUSIC PRACTICE
• Chapter Nine. “Building an Instrument” in the Collaborative Composition and Performance of Works for Piano and Live Electronics
• Chapter Ten. Approaching Music through Language: A Lacanian Perspective
• Chapter Eleven. Developing Key Concepts of Ensemble Performance
• Chapter Twelve. The Decibel New Music Ensemble: Artistic Research in Experimental Music at the Academy
• Chapter Thirteen. “Speaking in Tongues”: An Investigation into a Compositional Practice Informed by Intercultural Exploration
• Chapter Fourteen. Creativity and the Blues: A Philosophical Approach to Practice and Research
• Chapter Fifteen. Disturbing Perspectives of Research in Music
• Index
• About the Contributors