Strictly Academic: ideas on freewriting vs planning! Conference for the week

It’s Friday and my thoughts turn backwards to reflect on the thesis-related writing and thinking I have done during the week. Years of collecting articles, references, pictures and scouring archives…I have an awful lot of information and bits and pieces of drafts! Here I wanted to share my approach to writing: I have experimented with different ways of beginning, planning, structuring, reviewing and ending. I have to say: between the two options of freewriting/creating a zero draft and planning extensively before beginning, I have found PLANNING PLANNING PLANNING the way to go – I love the fact that I don’t have to face the spectre of serious restructuring at the end. I should add that I have found freewriting very valuable at various points however.

While I have already done different drafts of part of the thesis, I am finding this article about John Carlis’s concept of a one-draft disseration very helpful – keeping the contributions you hope to make through the thesis in mind is a great idea, and having a storyboard and paragraph topic sentences as the author suggests, work well for me. I also like the idea of avoiding ‘false progress’  - and then having to ditch reams of words because they don’t quite fit together or work easily into your overall argument…

How does history teach the classical musician?

Classical music is a highly specialised art form; the cliché of early years spent drilling scales and arpeggios rings true for many a musician.

Why, in a specialised medium which is essentially practical and tactile, and in which most learning is absorbed through a teacher, (supplemented by recordings, performances and colleagues) should we be bothered by learning about the history of this music and of its rendering in the past? 

On a simple level, advocates of historically informed performance practice could argue that integral to a convincing performance of a work is an understanding of how this work may have been played in its historical context – and that in the recreation of similar circumstances of performance, the essence of a work is to be most faithfully captured (of course not all early music devotees believe this). This is one level of argument for historical understanding, which I will not further expound on here, as I would like to engage with a slightly different (though related) argument for historical understanding in classical music.

On a simple level, the possibility of adding to our repertoire is one very basic reason for delving into the past and investigating the history  of a musician in whom we may be interested, or a musical institution or composer.  The chance of recovering neglected compositions is a real one.

By our enquiry, we may also discover that, in the performance of western art music, our given mores and traditions weren’t necessarily always as they are now, and are not as immutable as they seem.

Researching the practices of an interesting performer in the past may also entice us to try something new in our own performance, to mix works differently, to embellish and extemporise at a certain moment, and to adapt, change and develop repertoire in a new (or old!) way.

It would always seem that the most valuable outcome of such an enquiry is in fact a new, better, more convincing way to do something; hopefully though, what might develop in the player concerned is an ability to question the conventions which govern us.

Enquiry teaches us much more than we can suppose it will at the outset.

Musicology

Why analyse music and music-making? Why become involved in musicology? 

To study something beautiful and uplifting

To be further uplifted and inspired

To understand the proportions of different musical works and how they affect us

To observe humans interacting with something of metaphysical proportions at the same time as interacting with each other 

To uncover the web of human connections that exist around a profound but also at times prosaic activity

Sound, self and heterogeneity

Reflecting on rehearsing and aesthetic ideals…

Right now I should be working on a field trip presentation which I have due tomorrow… but first, some questions I have.

The questions I have relate to rehearsing chamber music, and separate out into three lines of enquiry:

1. Where does self begin and end in sound, and how is this modified in a chamber environment? And then the end result is…?

2. Why do we strive for homogeneity of sound, when do we strive for heterogeneity?

3. How does tradition define our exploration of the above ideas when we rehearse? And when is it best to leave tradition behind?  

The first question begs another to be asked; should we even be concerned with the idea of sound having a sense of self?

I am going to leave these questions here for a day and come back later on to write down my conclusions!

Music and words

Welcome to my blog!

This is the first entry for my cellopoetry blog. I am a cellist and I also write on various musical issues.

Right now I am listening to some classic hits from ‘The Cure’ as I consider where this blog is going to go over the next few weeks.

I will add posts on a variety of music topics including performance practice issues, nineteenth-century music history and current issues concerning musicians.

In the meantime, please check out my website: 

www.bonniesmart.com.au