For a long time, the perfect execution of a score was the ultimate goal for classical performing musicians. Nowadays, they increasingly face changing expectations of new settings (cultural, technological...), in new roles (creator, executor...) using new skills (digital, interartistic...); but these are difficult to integrate into the traditional métier which lies at the core of professional musicianship. Within this research project, the aim is to fundamentally connect traditional musical métier with these challenges by designing a unifying model for musical praxis, based on practice led research in a set of artistic (-pedagogical) projects in non-traditional settings with multiple agents. How, what and why do artists (implicitely) negotiate in their sensemaking practices?
By participatively and inductively searching for answers, artistic choices, actions and implications are explicited and connected to mutual expectations in terms of methods, practices and outcomes. The 4-year investigation focuses on a variety of different projects, which allows to increasingly delineate the parameters and processes of the artistic interactions, and to process the results into a new model. Ultimately, the objective of this PhD research is to answer the question: What model(s) of musical praxis that reconcile(s)traditional performative practice and métier with contemporary requirements can be designed by investigating the processes of participatory sensemaking in non-traditional artistic creations?
Promotors: Kathleen Coessens (Conservatoire) and Pascal Gielen (UAntwerp)
