Early Music: A contemporary perspective on repertoire and interpretation
Given the massive accumulation of historic materials, sources, instruments, traditions of practice, and recordings, Western art music is currently confronted with hyper-documentation and hyper-archives. Music has so many sources, material layers, and modes of appearance that its transmission transcends any mode of singular formalization or perception. (de Assis, 2023, p. 59)
Inspired by Paulo de Assis’ article in Forum+, research group UP-Performance in Perspective seeks to engage with the archive of Western music history in an innovative way. We draw on questions and methods from the intersection of ethnomusicology and Early Music, on models of experimental systems (Hans-Jörg Rheinberger), and on cultural-philosophical frameworks by, among others, Jonathan Impett and Georgina Born. In this way, Early Music – driven by artistic research – can persist as a revolutionary concept (Early Music), resulting in performances that surprise and challenge us.
Our experimental and interdisciplinary approach is characterised by a continuous interaction between theory and practice. Methodologically, we focus on the concept of assemblage as developed by de Assis (based on Deleuze). Combined with Born’s relational perspective and her concept of social mediations, this yields a view of artistic research that links the performer’s creative agency and ontological renewal with a critical understanding of music’s social entanglements.
As part of this project, we are organizing a new series of reflection sessions: the thinkUPs. Each session features an influential musical thinker as our central guest. Throughout the series, with the help of moderator Marlies De Munck, we explore innovative perspectives on the musical (hyper)archive, musical works, and early music, and how they apply to the ongoing artistic research within our research group. The thinkUPs are open to interested researchers, students, lecturers, and external parties.
thinkUP #1: Paulo de Assis, Tuesday September 23rd at 1 pm in the theater space of Rif, Deurneleitje 6, 2640 Mortsel
thinkUP #2: Georgina Born, Tuesday December 9th at 2 pm at the ARIA attic, Lange Sint-Annastraat 7, 2000 Antwerp
thinkUP #3: Jonathan Impett, Tuesday March 24th at 10 am at the ARIA attic, Lange Sint-Annastraat 7, 2000 Antwerp
thinkUP #4: Lydia Goehr, Tuesday June 23rd at 10 am at the ARIA attic, Lange Sint-Annastraat 7, 2000 Antwerp
Bibliography:
Assis, P. de. (2023). Music 2.0 and artistic research. Beyond a thousand years of Western art music. FORUM+, 30(1/2), 54–63.
de Assis, P. (2018). Logic of Experimentation: Reshaping Music Performance in and through Artistic Research. Leuven University Press.
Born, G. (2017). After Relational Aesthetics: Improvised Music, the Social, and (Re)Theorizing the Aesthetic. In G. Born, E. Lewis, & W. Straw (Eds.), Improvisation and Social Aesthetics (pp. 33–58). Duke University Press.
Born, G. (2005). On Musical Mediation: Ontology, Technology and Creativity. Twentieth-Century Music, 2(1), 7–36. https://doi.org/10.1017/S147857220500023X
Impett, J. (2024). Nows, Thens, and Truths: Attending to the Present in Performing the Past. In M. Mitchell (Ed.), Early Music in the 21st Century (pp. 168–186). Oxford University Press.
Updated: October 2025
