Music and Landscape / Soundscape and Sonic art, 2019
In this text I explore the shifting interrelationship between listening and landscape in recent s... more In this text I explore the shifting interrelationship between listening and landscape in recent site-specific sound art & music performances, and critically reflect on how this relationship is conceived and articulated via particular assumptions about scale, duration and perspective. Rather than focusing on an analysis of works and their surroundings, I follow a rather more relational approach, taking as my departure point two examples of recent events set in historic sites in Greece, and pursuing two parallel narratives of peripatetic listening effected in, and through, these two spaces. At a time when listening is becoming a predominantly platform-based, networked activity with more symbolic than actual value, I suggest it is important to consider alternative curatorial and compositional practices that allow for more intimate modes of engagement with the audible environment. At the turn of the 21st century, when the work of landscape theorists like Denis Cosgrove and Kenneth Olwig...
Underground, experimental and improvised practices have attracted considerable research attention... more Underground, experimental and improvised practices have attracted considerable research attention recently: as examples of “unpopular” popular music; as inbetween genres awaiting to be classified; and as historically overlooked processes that impact on more visible musical histories (e.g. Graham 2012, Beins et al. 2011, Prevost 2011). Such accounts, for all their diversity, are often inevitably centric.
Narratives on Greek post-1945 modernism often revolve around a central question of tonality, clas... more Narratives on Greek post-1945 modernism often revolve around a central question of tonality, classifying composers on the measure of their adherence or departure from established models of pitch organization, and framing their output primarily within the context of tonal vs atonal or neoclassical vs serial paradigms. Alternative modes of notation, problematisation of the modernist ideals of technique and virtuosity, and experimentation across genres and media are an uncomfortable fit in this nexus. The large-scale graphic work of Anestis Logothetis, for instance, or Jani Christou’s ventures into extended performance, are often portrayed as exceptional, idiosyncratic, if not downright exotic “anomalies” in an otherwise neatly defined taxonomy. At the same time, despite little evidence that their work was ever assimilated by the Greek musical and cultural establishment, these composers have become increasingly prevalent in recent theoretical and historical accounts, which paradoxically almost grant them “national composer” status. Starting with a re-evaluation of current and recent analytical literature and performance practice research on Christou’s cross-media compositions, and Logothetis’ graphic scores, I attempt a critical look at the liminal role occupied by graphic notation, extended performance and intermedia in the construction of a postwar Greek art music canon, and consider methodologies for a more inclusive, analytically grounded account of post-1960s Greek modernism. In so doing, I argue that the aesthetic and stylistic paradigm more suited to analyzing some of these examples, is not so much the ever elusive idea of modernism, but rather, that of experimentalism
Στο κείμενο διερευνώνται, μέσα από μια σειρά αφηγήσεων από το χώρο της μουσικής και των ηχητικών ... more Στο κείμενο διερευνώνται, μέσα από μια σειρά αφηγήσεων από το χώρο της μουσικής και των ηχητικών τεχνών, ορισμένες προβληματικές που παραμένουν ανοιχτές στο λόγο περι ηχητικών ή ακουστικών ιδιοτήτων του τοπίου. Μπορούμε να μιλήσουμε για τη σχέση ήχου-τοπίου με τρόπο ηχοκεντρικό και όχι αμιγώς οπτικό; Ποιος είναι ο ρόλος του σώματος στον προσδιορισμό, την καταγραφή και την αποτύπωση αυτής της σχέσης; Πόσο δόκιμος είναι ο όρος «ηχοτοπίο», και τι ζητήματα εγείρονται κατά τη χρήση του; Tι μπορούν να μας μάθουν οι καλλιτεχνικές και θεωρητικές πρακτικές που υιοθετήθηκαν σε επιτόπια πλαίσια από αυτοσχεδιαστές μουσικούς και καλλιτέχνες του ήχου;
With a vast and ever-increasing filmography and an equally large corpus of genre-defying theoreti... more With a vast and ever-increasing filmography and an equally large corpus of genre-defying theoretical work, the output of Jean-Luc Godard’s long career (1960– ) appears, at best, labyrinthine. Unsurprisingly, several comprehensive presentations and explications of Godard’s cinema have been attempted, mostly in the form of monographs or edited volumes re-evaluating his entire filmic oeuvre (for example, Sterritt 1999; Temple et al. 2004; Conley and Kline 2014). Among other things, these attempts problematize the political and ideological repercussions of Godard’s early output (MacCabe et al. 1980), consider Godard as historiographer and theorist (Neer 2007; Witt 2013) and contextualize the idiosyncratic aesthetics of his later work within a broader spectrum of philosophical references (D. Morgan 2012). However, aside from some sporadic reference to sound in Godard’s films since the 1980s, visuality and the predominance of the image as an affective and narrative medium remain central to most endeavours. The chapter attempts a predominantly sound-based (rather than image-biased) navigation through the complex universe of Godard’s later films. It makes a critical case for recontextualizing his notoriously eclectic approach to the soundtrack by drawing on more experimental aural art forms, such as musique concrète, noise music and sound art. Exploring such paradigms in connection with Godard’s fragmentary aesthetic, as epitomized in his monumental eight-part Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988–98) and his more recent feature-length films, particularly Film socialisme (2010) and Adieu au langage (2014), the relationship between music, noise and silence emerges as a significant, albeit critically underexplored, framework for the assessment of Godard’s unique contribution to contemporary non-narrative cinema
The years immediately following the onset of the Greek economic crisis have witnessed a notable g... more The years immediately following the onset of the Greek economic crisis have witnessed a notable growth in do-it-yourself and collaborative music initiatives. Looking at the period 2009-2013 in particular, impromptu home gigs and home-run labels of international outreach, exploratory cross-media workshops, spontaneous collectives and independently run venues hosting hundreds of shows per year, attest to a paradoxically booming cultural life, centered around experimentation on an individual and collective level. At the same time, a combination of harsh legal and economic measures, abruptly introduced and/or reinforced since 2013, with Athens as the epicenter of law enforcement, are drastically changing the game on all independent music-making, to dubious and uncertain results. Following Cage (1955/1961), Nyman (1974/1999) and more recent attempts at definition (e.g. Mauceri 1997, Goehr 2008, Saunders 2009, Piekut 2011) experimental music is not so much understood as a musical genre per se; rather, it is a more complex aesthetic and social stance vis-à-vis music-making, inextricably bound with ideas of perpetual questioning (Saladin 2012), and of initiating processes with uncertain end-outcomes and results (Eno 1999). The chapter draws attention to musical experimentation as “an act the outcome of which is unknown” (Cage 1955/1961), in the erratically changing context of post-2009 Athens. The backbone to the investigation focuses on Knot Gallery, a dedicated venue in Athens, active between 2009 and 2013.
Debbie Thomas was a Greek-American 80s teen pop queen, born in Houston, TX in the mid-1970s, and ... more Debbie Thomas was a Greek-American 80s teen pop queen, born in Houston, TX in the mid-1970s, and an imaginary persona conceived in the mind of a 10-year-old girl in Athens, Greece, around 1989. Between 1989 and 1991, Debbie the persona made several world tours, released four platinum albums in three languages, became a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and started her own charity. Meanwhile, Debbie the 10-year-old played her music on school nights and weekends on the family piano, composing songs on demand for friends, family and local scene heroes who happened to hear her. Then, sometime in early 1992, she dropped it all and went silent for about 20 years. In 2012, Danae Stefanou, a 33-year-old musicologist based in Athens, decided to search her parents’ basement, retrieve all her childhood tapes and bring Debbie back to life. She found a couple of tapes in good condition, digitised them, scanned handwritten lyrics and memorabilia like the ones that are reproduced in this chapter, and asked some of her highly-esteemed friends to contribute their own responses to Debbie’s unlikely legacy.
Conceptual blending is a cognitive theory positing the combination of diverse conceptual spaces f... more Conceptual blending is a cognitive theory positing the combination of diverse conceptual spaces for the creation of novel blended spaces. Musical conceptual blending can be intra-musical, pertaining to the combination of diverse structural elements for the creation of new melodies, harmonies or textures, as well as cross-domain, involving the integration of musical and non-musical spaces for the creation of novel analogies or metaphors. This article presents a structural and hermeneutical analysis of “Il vecchio castello” and “Samuel Goldenberg und Schmuÿle” from Modest Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in an attempt to disclose both the intra-musical (combination of modal, tonal or coloristic harmonic spaces and rhythmic/textural structure) and extra-musical (contextual, symbolic and programmatic aspects) conceptual blending that the works incorporate. The reductional/prolongational analyses provide input for two distinct Conceptual Integration Networks, the first describing the intra-musical blending of melodic harmonization and the second proposing the cross-domain blending of the musical and pictorial input spaces into a blended hermeneutical space that projects the works’ narrative/programmatic/emotional potential. The proposed analyses show how musical structure promotes creative listening and meaning construction through complex cross-domain integration. This research suggests that conceptual blending theory as an analytical tool can promote a richer structural interpretation and experience of music, even in cases of instrumental, non-vocal compositions.
The article overviews the basic assumptions and limitations of conceptual blending theory (CBT) a... more The article overviews the basic assumptions and limitations of conceptual blending theory (CBT) as applied to music, and reconsiders the implications of the theory for musical creativity. CBT accounts of music have until now relied quite extensively on examples of music-as-product, and rarely considered the various levels of mediation between composition, performance and listening. It is therefore argued that an investigation of more process-based paradigms could hold significant ramifications for CBT. This argument is elaborated through a discussion of three intermedial, open-form scores by Earle Brown, Pauline Oliveros and Jennifer Walshe. The scores are considered as documents of situations where one or more performers partake, as active agents, in the composition, completion and elaboration of new cross-domain blends, as well as in the disintegration of already blended concepts. This conscious disintegration or unpacking of blends in performance is discussed as a significant aspect of the musical blending process as such, and one that deserves further consideration in creative conceptual blending research.
The paper aims at a critical dialogue between music education and museum education, arguing for r... more The paper aims at a critical dialogue between music education and museum education, arguing for reflective, practice-based approaches to learning about the past in an ambivalent present. We begin by unpacking current, conflicting discourses on creativity in contemporary Greek educational contexts, describing a number of 'fences' (in the form of unexamined practices, authoritarianism, imposition of obsolete forms of thinking music and education) that curtail children’s creative engagement with music. Such fences form a generalised conception which we refer to as 'museum music': a stereotyped vision of music as definitive, monumental, canonic collection of historic masterpieces, preserved and restored by expert professionals. Highlighting the complexities that arise out of the curious interaction between this 'monumental' conception of music and emerging neoliberal discourses on fast, effective, skills-and-results-based creative production, we argue that the import of neoliberal discourses in a context where didacticism and authoritarian teaching practices still prevail, short-circuits and undermines both creative practices in themselves and qualitative understandings of creativity, in alarming and seemingly irreparable ways. At the same time, we recognise that the museum, as a public space for including, producing, staging but also problematising people’s subjective approaches to the past, can be a powerful, disruptive locus, where linear, singular narrative conceptions of History are revisited and critically relativized. It can thus act as a fertile context for fostering creative engagement with aspects of the (musical, cultural and social) past and as an open space where students can actively construct and present personal narratives. In the last two sections of this text, we inquire into ways in which music education might be liberated from 'museum music' stereotypes by actually 'taking a ride to the museum', that is, by adopting contemporary museum education modes of practice and bringing critical, open-ended learning approaches into museum spaces. We thus offer two short critical accounts of recent practice-based projects in that direction, carried out at the Archaeological Museum of the city of Volos and the Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens respectively. In discussing these projects, we reflect on the potential of a situated, museum-based or museum-inspired music education, as a remedy against the vacuum of a placeless, instrumentalised, 'museum music' education. On the basis of a “performative, embodied approach” to museum education (Hooper-Greenhill 2007: 192), musical experiences of this kind may contribute to a broader creative recontextualisation of the relationships between sound, context and memory.
Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Jan 1, 2003
THE year 2002 was one of special interest for experimental music studies: it marked the double an... more THE year 2002 was one of special interest for experimental music studies: it marked the double anniversary of 90 years since John Cage's birth and ten years since his death, and it saw the publication of two significant contributions to Cage research. 1 Crucially, neither ...
The paper problematises some implications of the turn towards a virtualised creative economy for ... more The paper problematises some implications of the turn towards a virtualised creative economy for the conceptualisation of sound and music, and the political and social status of music‐making in late capitalist society. Assessing how modes associated with improvised, DIY musical activity can become co‐opted by private or corporate interests, it is argued that open, freely improvised practices can and should be critically differentiated from machinic models of openness, through small but decisive gestures that defy subsumption.
Mainstream narratives of Greek modernism operate around a sparse but pervasive canon. The criteri... more Mainstream narratives of Greek modernism operate around a sparse but pervasive canon. The criteria and corresponding analytical tools for this canon are often reduced to the singular question of tonality, and the measure of adherence or departure from established models of pitch organization. Alternative modes of notation, problematisation of the modernist ideals of technique and virtuosity, and experimentation across genres and media as one finds e.g. in Jani Christou, are an uncomfortable fit. Consequently, not only Christou’s late works, but even the markedly less radical graphic output of Anestis Logothetis, are often portrayed as exceptional, idiosyncratic, if not downright exotic “anomalies” in an otherwise neat local taxonomy. Moreover, this approach inconspicuously collapses an entire forcefield of twentieth-century cross-media currents and developments (including Dada, Fluxus, experimental music theatre and sound art) into one single opaque notion of modernism as a high-culture, post-Schoenbergian break with tradition, realized and communicated through a fixed set of Western Art Music genres and institutions. What is left out, are the relevant responses and contributions to these developments from artists that did not quite make the aforementioned canon, but contributed to a radical re-appropriation of post-war European modernism through different channels, be it the sound poetry and performance art of Christou’s contemporary Leonidas Christakis (1928-2009), the interdisciplinary collective interventions of Dimosioypalliliko Retire (1984-2006), or the extended notation and intermedia works of younger generation composers (e.g. Alexis Porfiriadis, b. 1971). In examining such cases, the “failed project” narrative of Greek modernism becomes a rather more complex story, and lends itself more easily to a deeper, socially situated analysis. Starting with a re-evaluation of the current analytical literature on Christou’s cross-media compositions, I draw on a series of “liminal paradigms” from the above fields, and consider methodologies for a more inclusive, analytically grounded account of post-1960s Greek modernism.
«Τι είδους ιστορία είναι η Ιστορία;», ρωτόυσε ο Leo Treitler το 1984. Το ερώτημά του θα αποτελούσ... more «Τι είδους ιστορία είναι η Ιστορία;», ρωτόυσε ο Leo Treitler το 1984. Το ερώτημά του θα αποτελούσε αφετηρία για μια σειρά από έντονα αναστοχαστικές προσεγγίσεις στη μουσική ιστοριογραφία, από τις ριζοσπαστικές προτάσεις της νεοαναδυόμενης τότε «Νέας Μουσικολογίας» για την αποδόμηση κάθε κυρίαρχης αφήγησης, μέχρι τις απόπειρες διεπιστημονικού επαναπροσδιορισμού του πεδίου της Ιστορικής Μουσικολογίας, μέσα από το μεθοδολογικό πρίσμα άλλων ανθρωπιστικών και κοινωνικών επιστημών. Στην παρούσα ανακοίνωση επιχειρείται μια επανατοποθέτηση του παραπάνω ερωτήματος τριάντα χρόνια αργότερα, στην Ελλάδα του 2014. Με αφορμή πρόσφατες και τρέχουσες ερευνητικές δραστηριότητες, μεταξύ των οποίων η νεοιδρυθείσα ερευνητική ομάδα κριτικής μουσικής ιστοριογραφίας στο Τμήμα Μουσικών Σπουδών Α.Π.Θ., θέτω μια σειρά από κριτικά ερωτήματα όπως: «τι είδους μουσικές ιστορίες καταγράφουμε / αξιολογούμε / αφηγούμαστε και γιατί;» και «τι λειτουργίες & ρόλους μπορεί να εκπροσωπήσει η σύγχρονη ιστορική μουσικολογία;». Διερευνώντας τις παραπάνω προβληματικές, επικεντρώνομαι σε παραδείγματα όπου ο συνδυασμός κριτικών, επιτόπιων και διεπιστημονικών μεθοδολογιών έρευνας καθιστά δυνατή την επέκταση και διεύρυνση του πεδίου της μουσικής ιστοριογραφίας, προς μέχρι τώρα ανεξερεύνητες ή ανεπαρκώς προσδιορισμένες κατευθύνσεις.
Music and Landscape / Soundscape and Sonic art, 2019
In this text I explore the shifting interrelationship between listening and landscape in recent s... more In this text I explore the shifting interrelationship between listening and landscape in recent site-specific sound art & music performances, and critically reflect on how this relationship is conceived and articulated via particular assumptions about scale, duration and perspective. Rather than focusing on an analysis of works and their surroundings, I follow a rather more relational approach, taking as my departure point two examples of recent events set in historic sites in Greece, and pursuing two parallel narratives of peripatetic listening effected in, and through, these two spaces. At a time when listening is becoming a predominantly platform-based, networked activity with more symbolic than actual value, I suggest it is important to consider alternative curatorial and compositional practices that allow for more intimate modes of engagement with the audible environment. At the turn of the 21st century, when the work of landscape theorists like Denis Cosgrove and Kenneth Olwig...
Underground, experimental and improvised practices have attracted considerable research attention... more Underground, experimental and improvised practices have attracted considerable research attention recently: as examples of “unpopular” popular music; as inbetween genres awaiting to be classified; and as historically overlooked processes that impact on more visible musical histories (e.g. Graham 2012, Beins et al. 2011, Prevost 2011). Such accounts, for all their diversity, are often inevitably centric.
Narratives on Greek post-1945 modernism often revolve around a central question of tonality, clas... more Narratives on Greek post-1945 modernism often revolve around a central question of tonality, classifying composers on the measure of their adherence or departure from established models of pitch organization, and framing their output primarily within the context of tonal vs atonal or neoclassical vs serial paradigms. Alternative modes of notation, problematisation of the modernist ideals of technique and virtuosity, and experimentation across genres and media are an uncomfortable fit in this nexus. The large-scale graphic work of Anestis Logothetis, for instance, or Jani Christou’s ventures into extended performance, are often portrayed as exceptional, idiosyncratic, if not downright exotic “anomalies” in an otherwise neatly defined taxonomy. At the same time, despite little evidence that their work was ever assimilated by the Greek musical and cultural establishment, these composers have become increasingly prevalent in recent theoretical and historical accounts, which paradoxically almost grant them “national composer” status. Starting with a re-evaluation of current and recent analytical literature and performance practice research on Christou’s cross-media compositions, and Logothetis’ graphic scores, I attempt a critical look at the liminal role occupied by graphic notation, extended performance and intermedia in the construction of a postwar Greek art music canon, and consider methodologies for a more inclusive, analytically grounded account of post-1960s Greek modernism. In so doing, I argue that the aesthetic and stylistic paradigm more suited to analyzing some of these examples, is not so much the ever elusive idea of modernism, but rather, that of experimentalism
Στο κείμενο διερευνώνται, μέσα από μια σειρά αφηγήσεων από το χώρο της μουσικής και των ηχητικών ... more Στο κείμενο διερευνώνται, μέσα από μια σειρά αφηγήσεων από το χώρο της μουσικής και των ηχητικών τεχνών, ορισμένες προβληματικές που παραμένουν ανοιχτές στο λόγο περι ηχητικών ή ακουστικών ιδιοτήτων του τοπίου. Μπορούμε να μιλήσουμε για τη σχέση ήχου-τοπίου με τρόπο ηχοκεντρικό και όχι αμιγώς οπτικό; Ποιος είναι ο ρόλος του σώματος στον προσδιορισμό, την καταγραφή και την αποτύπωση αυτής της σχέσης; Πόσο δόκιμος είναι ο όρος «ηχοτοπίο», και τι ζητήματα εγείρονται κατά τη χρήση του; Tι μπορούν να μας μάθουν οι καλλιτεχνικές και θεωρητικές πρακτικές που υιοθετήθηκαν σε επιτόπια πλαίσια από αυτοσχεδιαστές μουσικούς και καλλιτέχνες του ήχου;
With a vast and ever-increasing filmography and an equally large corpus of genre-defying theoreti... more With a vast and ever-increasing filmography and an equally large corpus of genre-defying theoretical work, the output of Jean-Luc Godard’s long career (1960– ) appears, at best, labyrinthine. Unsurprisingly, several comprehensive presentations and explications of Godard’s cinema have been attempted, mostly in the form of monographs or edited volumes re-evaluating his entire filmic oeuvre (for example, Sterritt 1999; Temple et al. 2004; Conley and Kline 2014). Among other things, these attempts problematize the political and ideological repercussions of Godard’s early output (MacCabe et al. 1980), consider Godard as historiographer and theorist (Neer 2007; Witt 2013) and contextualize the idiosyncratic aesthetics of his later work within a broader spectrum of philosophical references (D. Morgan 2012). However, aside from some sporadic reference to sound in Godard’s films since the 1980s, visuality and the predominance of the image as an affective and narrative medium remain central to most endeavours. The chapter attempts a predominantly sound-based (rather than image-biased) navigation through the complex universe of Godard’s later films. It makes a critical case for recontextualizing his notoriously eclectic approach to the soundtrack by drawing on more experimental aural art forms, such as musique concrète, noise music and sound art. Exploring such paradigms in connection with Godard’s fragmentary aesthetic, as epitomized in his monumental eight-part Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988–98) and his more recent feature-length films, particularly Film socialisme (2010) and Adieu au langage (2014), the relationship between music, noise and silence emerges as a significant, albeit critically underexplored, framework for the assessment of Godard’s unique contribution to contemporary non-narrative cinema
The years immediately following the onset of the Greek economic crisis have witnessed a notable g... more The years immediately following the onset of the Greek economic crisis have witnessed a notable growth in do-it-yourself and collaborative music initiatives. Looking at the period 2009-2013 in particular, impromptu home gigs and home-run labels of international outreach, exploratory cross-media workshops, spontaneous collectives and independently run venues hosting hundreds of shows per year, attest to a paradoxically booming cultural life, centered around experimentation on an individual and collective level. At the same time, a combination of harsh legal and economic measures, abruptly introduced and/or reinforced since 2013, with Athens as the epicenter of law enforcement, are drastically changing the game on all independent music-making, to dubious and uncertain results. Following Cage (1955/1961), Nyman (1974/1999) and more recent attempts at definition (e.g. Mauceri 1997, Goehr 2008, Saunders 2009, Piekut 2011) experimental music is not so much understood as a musical genre per se; rather, it is a more complex aesthetic and social stance vis-à-vis music-making, inextricably bound with ideas of perpetual questioning (Saladin 2012), and of initiating processes with uncertain end-outcomes and results (Eno 1999). The chapter draws attention to musical experimentation as “an act the outcome of which is unknown” (Cage 1955/1961), in the erratically changing context of post-2009 Athens. The backbone to the investigation focuses on Knot Gallery, a dedicated venue in Athens, active between 2009 and 2013.
Debbie Thomas was a Greek-American 80s teen pop queen, born in Houston, TX in the mid-1970s, and ... more Debbie Thomas was a Greek-American 80s teen pop queen, born in Houston, TX in the mid-1970s, and an imaginary persona conceived in the mind of a 10-year-old girl in Athens, Greece, around 1989. Between 1989 and 1991, Debbie the persona made several world tours, released four platinum albums in three languages, became a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and started her own charity. Meanwhile, Debbie the 10-year-old played her music on school nights and weekends on the family piano, composing songs on demand for friends, family and local scene heroes who happened to hear her. Then, sometime in early 1992, she dropped it all and went silent for about 20 years. In 2012, Danae Stefanou, a 33-year-old musicologist based in Athens, decided to search her parents’ basement, retrieve all her childhood tapes and bring Debbie back to life. She found a couple of tapes in good condition, digitised them, scanned handwritten lyrics and memorabilia like the ones that are reproduced in this chapter, and asked some of her highly-esteemed friends to contribute their own responses to Debbie’s unlikely legacy.
Conceptual blending is a cognitive theory positing the combination of diverse conceptual spaces f... more Conceptual blending is a cognitive theory positing the combination of diverse conceptual spaces for the creation of novel blended spaces. Musical conceptual blending can be intra-musical, pertaining to the combination of diverse structural elements for the creation of new melodies, harmonies or textures, as well as cross-domain, involving the integration of musical and non-musical spaces for the creation of novel analogies or metaphors. This article presents a structural and hermeneutical analysis of “Il vecchio castello” and “Samuel Goldenberg und Schmuÿle” from Modest Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in an attempt to disclose both the intra-musical (combination of modal, tonal or coloristic harmonic spaces and rhythmic/textural structure) and extra-musical (contextual, symbolic and programmatic aspects) conceptual blending that the works incorporate. The reductional/prolongational analyses provide input for two distinct Conceptual Integration Networks, the first describing the intra-musical blending of melodic harmonization and the second proposing the cross-domain blending of the musical and pictorial input spaces into a blended hermeneutical space that projects the works’ narrative/programmatic/emotional potential. The proposed analyses show how musical structure promotes creative listening and meaning construction through complex cross-domain integration. This research suggests that conceptual blending theory as an analytical tool can promote a richer structural interpretation and experience of music, even in cases of instrumental, non-vocal compositions.
The article overviews the basic assumptions and limitations of conceptual blending theory (CBT) a... more The article overviews the basic assumptions and limitations of conceptual blending theory (CBT) as applied to music, and reconsiders the implications of the theory for musical creativity. CBT accounts of music have until now relied quite extensively on examples of music-as-product, and rarely considered the various levels of mediation between composition, performance and listening. It is therefore argued that an investigation of more process-based paradigms could hold significant ramifications for CBT. This argument is elaborated through a discussion of three intermedial, open-form scores by Earle Brown, Pauline Oliveros and Jennifer Walshe. The scores are considered as documents of situations where one or more performers partake, as active agents, in the composition, completion and elaboration of new cross-domain blends, as well as in the disintegration of already blended concepts. This conscious disintegration or unpacking of blends in performance is discussed as a significant aspect of the musical blending process as such, and one that deserves further consideration in creative conceptual blending research.
The paper aims at a critical dialogue between music education and museum education, arguing for r... more The paper aims at a critical dialogue between music education and museum education, arguing for reflective, practice-based approaches to learning about the past in an ambivalent present. We begin by unpacking current, conflicting discourses on creativity in contemporary Greek educational contexts, describing a number of 'fences' (in the form of unexamined practices, authoritarianism, imposition of obsolete forms of thinking music and education) that curtail children’s creative engagement with music. Such fences form a generalised conception which we refer to as 'museum music': a stereotyped vision of music as definitive, monumental, canonic collection of historic masterpieces, preserved and restored by expert professionals. Highlighting the complexities that arise out of the curious interaction between this 'monumental' conception of music and emerging neoliberal discourses on fast, effective, skills-and-results-based creative production, we argue that the import of neoliberal discourses in a context where didacticism and authoritarian teaching practices still prevail, short-circuits and undermines both creative practices in themselves and qualitative understandings of creativity, in alarming and seemingly irreparable ways. At the same time, we recognise that the museum, as a public space for including, producing, staging but also problematising people’s subjective approaches to the past, can be a powerful, disruptive locus, where linear, singular narrative conceptions of History are revisited and critically relativized. It can thus act as a fertile context for fostering creative engagement with aspects of the (musical, cultural and social) past and as an open space where students can actively construct and present personal narratives. In the last two sections of this text, we inquire into ways in which music education might be liberated from 'museum music' stereotypes by actually 'taking a ride to the museum', that is, by adopting contemporary museum education modes of practice and bringing critical, open-ended learning approaches into museum spaces. We thus offer two short critical accounts of recent practice-based projects in that direction, carried out at the Archaeological Museum of the city of Volos and the Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens respectively. In discussing these projects, we reflect on the potential of a situated, museum-based or museum-inspired music education, as a remedy against the vacuum of a placeless, instrumentalised, 'museum music' education. On the basis of a “performative, embodied approach” to museum education (Hooper-Greenhill 2007: 192), musical experiences of this kind may contribute to a broader creative recontextualisation of the relationships between sound, context and memory.
Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Jan 1, 2003
THE year 2002 was one of special interest for experimental music studies: it marked the double an... more THE year 2002 was one of special interest for experimental music studies: it marked the double anniversary of 90 years since John Cage's birth and ten years since his death, and it saw the publication of two significant contributions to Cage research. 1 Crucially, neither ...
The paper problematises some implications of the turn towards a virtualised creative economy for ... more The paper problematises some implications of the turn towards a virtualised creative economy for the conceptualisation of sound and music, and the political and social status of music‐making in late capitalist society. Assessing how modes associated with improvised, DIY musical activity can become co‐opted by private or corporate interests, it is argued that open, freely improvised practices can and should be critically differentiated from machinic models of openness, through small but decisive gestures that defy subsumption.
Mainstream narratives of Greek modernism operate around a sparse but pervasive canon. The criteri... more Mainstream narratives of Greek modernism operate around a sparse but pervasive canon. The criteria and corresponding analytical tools for this canon are often reduced to the singular question of tonality, and the measure of adherence or departure from established models of pitch organization. Alternative modes of notation, problematisation of the modernist ideals of technique and virtuosity, and experimentation across genres and media as one finds e.g. in Jani Christou, are an uncomfortable fit. Consequently, not only Christou’s late works, but even the markedly less radical graphic output of Anestis Logothetis, are often portrayed as exceptional, idiosyncratic, if not downright exotic “anomalies” in an otherwise neat local taxonomy. Moreover, this approach inconspicuously collapses an entire forcefield of twentieth-century cross-media currents and developments (including Dada, Fluxus, experimental music theatre and sound art) into one single opaque notion of modernism as a high-culture, post-Schoenbergian break with tradition, realized and communicated through a fixed set of Western Art Music genres and institutions. What is left out, are the relevant responses and contributions to these developments from artists that did not quite make the aforementioned canon, but contributed to a radical re-appropriation of post-war European modernism through different channels, be it the sound poetry and performance art of Christou’s contemporary Leonidas Christakis (1928-2009), the interdisciplinary collective interventions of Dimosioypalliliko Retire (1984-2006), or the extended notation and intermedia works of younger generation composers (e.g. Alexis Porfiriadis, b. 1971). In examining such cases, the “failed project” narrative of Greek modernism becomes a rather more complex story, and lends itself more easily to a deeper, socially situated analysis. Starting with a re-evaluation of the current analytical literature on Christou’s cross-media compositions, I draw on a series of “liminal paradigms” from the above fields, and consider methodologies for a more inclusive, analytically grounded account of post-1960s Greek modernism.
«Τι είδους ιστορία είναι η Ιστορία;», ρωτόυσε ο Leo Treitler το 1984. Το ερώτημά του θα αποτελούσ... more «Τι είδους ιστορία είναι η Ιστορία;», ρωτόυσε ο Leo Treitler το 1984. Το ερώτημά του θα αποτελούσε αφετηρία για μια σειρά από έντονα αναστοχαστικές προσεγγίσεις στη μουσική ιστοριογραφία, από τις ριζοσπαστικές προτάσεις της νεοαναδυόμενης τότε «Νέας Μουσικολογίας» για την αποδόμηση κάθε κυρίαρχης αφήγησης, μέχρι τις απόπειρες διεπιστημονικού επαναπροσδιορισμού του πεδίου της Ιστορικής Μουσικολογίας, μέσα από το μεθοδολογικό πρίσμα άλλων ανθρωπιστικών και κοινωνικών επιστημών. Στην παρούσα ανακοίνωση επιχειρείται μια επανατοποθέτηση του παραπάνω ερωτήματος τριάντα χρόνια αργότερα, στην Ελλάδα του 2014. Με αφορμή πρόσφατες και τρέχουσες ερευνητικές δραστηριότητες, μεταξύ των οποίων η νεοιδρυθείσα ερευνητική ομάδα κριτικής μουσικής ιστοριογραφίας στο Τμήμα Μουσικών Σπουδών Α.Π.Θ., θέτω μια σειρά από κριτικά ερωτήματα όπως: «τι είδους μουσικές ιστορίες καταγράφουμε / αξιολογούμε / αφηγούμαστε και γιατί;» και «τι λειτουργίες & ρόλους μπορεί να εκπροσωπήσει η σύγχρονη ιστορική μουσικολογία;». Διερευνώντας τις παραπάνω προβληματικές, επικεντρώνομαι σε παραδείγματα όπου ο συνδυασμός κριτικών, επιτόπιων και διεπιστημονικών μεθοδολογιών έρευνας καθιστά δυνατή την επέκταση και διεύρυνση του πεδίου της μουσικής ιστοριογραφίας, προς μέχρι τώρα ανεξερεύνητες ή ανεπαρκώς προσδιορισμένες κατευθύνσεις.
Abstract: With an ever increasing number of recent publications, conferences and funded initiativ... more Abstract: With an ever increasing number of recent publications, conferences and funded initiatives, an entire territory around improvisatory music-making and experimental, process-based, open-ended compositional practices is rapidly rendered visible and accountable, in both social and aesthetic terms. As Evan Parker deftly summarises, all that is now needed is “a history department that rescues, documents, archives and analyses the work done prior to the recent academic respectability – dusty work but somebody has to do it” (2014, p. 6). Much as the “dusty work” that Parker calls for may seem like the natural conclusion to a lengthy strife for public recognition and acceptance, the path towards “recent academic respectability” is hardly neutral or innocuous, and its purported universality also begs serious questions. How, and to what extent are previously undocumented historic practices becoming instrumentalized, reified and normalized in the interests of present-day, institutionally sanctioned accounts and narratives? What is left out of such “dusty work”, and why? How do current experimental and improvisatory initiatives negotiate their changing social representation, and what is at stake in this negotiation? Drawing on recent participatory fieldwork as well as archival research on lesser known aspects of historic and current experimentalism in Greece, I focus on a number of examples that suggest space, and the articulation of spatial politics, as crucial metaphors in the way dominant ideologies and pervasive political metaphors are silently embedded, actively contested or aesthetically reformulated in the praxis of musical experimentation. In concluding, I attempt a broader examination of free improvisation and experimental composition as acts of radical dissent.
The paper outlines theoretical and methodological developments in the study of social creativity,... more The paper outlines theoretical and methodological developments in the study of social creativity, focusing on collaborative and improvised music-making. Creativity and invention are contextualized as social, distributed processes, epitomized in the field of collaborative improvisation. A set of investigative questions and methodologies under development are then outlined, drawing on work-in-progress research in the fields of improvised music and collaborative mathematics. Particular reference is made to FolioHarmonies, a short qualitative study carried out as part of COINVENT project, and documenting collaborative, open-ended problem-solving processes in the creation of original musical pieces.
Πρακτικά του Διεθνούς Επιστημονικού Συνεδρίου «Τέχνη & Εκπαίδευση:Διδακτικές και Παιδαγωγικές προσεγγίσεις στο Σχολείο του 21ου αιώνα». Αθήνα: Ινστιτούτο Εκπαιδευτικής Πολιτικής (ΙΕΠ), Στέγη Γραμμάτων και Τεχνών του Ιδρύματος Ωνάσση, Ανώτατη Σχολή Καλών Τεχνών., 2018
In this paper we critically investigate the application of Fauconnier & Turner's Conceptual Blend... more In this paper we critically investigate the application of Fauconnier & Turner's Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT) in music, to expose a series of questions and aporias highlighted by current and recent theoretical work in the field. Investigating divisions between different levels of musical conceptualization and blending, we question the common distinction between intra-and extra-musical blending as well as the usually retrospective and explicative application of CBT. In response to these limitations, we argue that more emphasis could be given to bottom-up, contextual, creative and collaborative perspectives of conceptual blending in music. This discussion is illustrated by recent and in-progress practical research developed as part of the COINVENT project, and investigating structural and cross-domain blending in computational and social creativity contexts.
Conceptual blending is a cognitive theory proposing the combination of diverse conceptual spaces ... more Conceptual blending is a cognitive theory proposing the combination of diverse conceptual spaces for the creation of novel blended spaces. Musical conceptual blending can be intra-musical, pertaining to the combination of diverse structural elements for the creation of new melodies, harmonies or textures, as well as cross-domain, involving the integration of musical and non-musical spaces for the creation of novel analogies or metaphors. The present paper presents a structural and hermeneutical analysis of 'Il vecchio castello' from Modest Musorgsky's 'Pictures at an Exhibition' in an attempt to disclose both the intra-musical (combination of modal, tonal and coloristic harmonic spaces) and the extra-musical (contextual, symbolic and programmatic aspects) conceptual blending that the work incorporates. The analysis reveals that the piece comprises seven strophes of a song form that emerge from a common melodic core, through the dynamic evolution of harmonic spaces from diatonic modality to impressionistic/coloristic chromaticism and with the combinatorial use of ten harmonization concepts. The reductional/prolongational analysis provides input for two distinct Conceptual Integration Networks, the first describing the intra-musical blending of melodic harmonization and the second proposing the cross-domain blending of the musical and pictorial input spaces into a blended hermeneutical space that projects the work's narrative/programmatic/emotional potential. The proposed analysis shows how musical structure promotes meaning construction through cross-domain mapping. This research suggests that conceptual blending theory as an analytical tool can promote a richer structural interpretation and experience of Musorgsky's work.
Η ραδιοφωνία, η τηλεόραση και πιο πρόσφατα, η ηλεκτρονική διαδικτύωση, έδρασαν με καταλυτικό ρόλο... more Η ραδιοφωνία, η τηλεόραση και πιο πρόσφατα, η ηλεκτρονική διαδικτύωση, έδρασαν με καταλυτικό ρόλο στην εδραίωση και διάδοση των κυρίαρχων μεταπολεμικών μουσικών ρευμάτων στην Ευρώπη. Εξ΄ίσου αν όχι περισσότερο καταλυτικός υπήρξε και ο ρόλος της αναδυόμενης πρακτικής της πολιτιστικής διπλωματίας, στην επιλογή στήριξης και ανάδειξης συγκεκριμένων μουσικών ειδών, αλλά και στη διαμόρφωση τρόπων ακρόασης, θέασης και αξιολόγησης των τεχνών. Μια αναδρομική ματιά σε μερικά λιγότερο εμφανή σημεία συνάντησης ανάμεσα στις τέχνες, την πολιτιστική διπλωματία και τα ΜΜΕ, αποκαλύπτει αόρατες φωνές, βωβές εικόνες, και μια σειρά από ουσιώδη ερωτήματα.
Η ομιλία έγινε στα πλαίσια του συνεδρίου "To Tριπλό Ταξίδι: Mουσικές Ανταλλαγές Ανάμεσα στην Ελλάδα, τη Γερμανία και τη Γαλλία από το 1945 εως τις μέρες μας", Goethe Institut & Institut Français, Aθήνα 27-29 Νοεμβρίου 2013.
Part of the workshop "Creative Approaches to Blending in Music: Theoretical, Empirical and Comput... more Part of the workshop "Creative Approaches to Blending in Music: Theoretical, Empirical and Computational Perspectives" held at the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography on 6 October 2015. The workshop was organized / hosted by the A.U.TH. Cognitive and Computational Musicology Group as part of the E.U. - FP7 COINVENT project.
In Adam Curtis’ 2011 documentary, “All watched over by machines of loving grace”, computers are i... more In Adam Curtis’ 2011 documentary, “All watched over by machines of loving grace”, computers are identified as the dominant 20th century metaphor – a metaphor that managed to permeate every strand of contemporary social life, from economics and politics to environmental science and discourses on human nature. The so-called musical avant-garde is no exception. Whether we look at the international aspirations of total serialism and electronic composition, or at the more localized ideals of experimentalism and free improvisation, there is a common underlying thread: that of reliable (or reliably unpredictable) systems, and of material or virtual devices that once set up, are able to run their own course, ultimately transcending the powers of the individual human mind that set them in motion. Given the prevalence of this paradigm, it seems that behind the man/machine dualism there might be a more complex and significant force field. There are unresolved tensions between intentionality and unintentionality, between the need for control and the urge to escape it, between improvisation as a here-and-now, moment-to-moment creative practice and history as a retrospective, summative discipline that enables us to contextualize and situate a practice in relation to specific (and very uneasy) geographical, social and political agendas. In acknowledging this force field, new questions arise: What kind of transcendence is evoked through an “improvising mechanism”? What does the mechanistic metaphor say about the cultures that sustain it? Are we even capable of thinking beyond this paradigm, or are “people systems” the only way to account for people improvising together?
Τhe talk was presented at the Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens, as part of the invited panel "Philosophical Issues" with George Lewis. Full video available at http://secure.sgt.gr/en/multimedia/20,4,525
Part of the invited panel "Improvisation and Education" with Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, Randall Ev... more Part of the invited panel "Improvisation and Education" with Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, Randall Everett Allsup, Reynaldo Young and Ruth Wright. Symposium organized by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. Video proceedings of all talks available at http://www.sgt.gr/eng/SPG1146/
This thesis examines the notion of landscape and its aesthetic implications for the study of mod... more This thesis examines the notion of landscape and its aesthetic implications for the study of modem piano music; in so doing, it aims at an original approach, based on the primacy of performance as an event which gives rise to subjective experience. The term "landscape" is used in architectural theory to denote the sum of personal impressions generated by a place and the activities therein. It follows from this that the performance of a composition effectively "takes place": it is thus in itself both a transmission of sensory stimuli and a complete lived event, with its own time and place, to be represented in the minds of listening subjects. By way of illustration, the thesis investigates certain piano works by John Cage, which explore the very nature of performance in order to generate a reactive process between composition, performance space, and audiences. It then argues that Cage's aesthetic position is by no means an isolated contemporary phenomenon. On the contrary, its implications were manifest throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, not only in Satie - an acknowledged influence on Cage's music - but also in the music of such composers as Messiaen and Debussy. Even earlier, however, one encounters the especially pertinent case of Franz Liszt and the Annees de Pelerinage. By superimposing Cage's perspective onto Liszt's explorations of performance as evocation, common patterns are revealed between the two composers' idiosyncratic - and, seemingly, mutually exclusive - styles. Using the notion of landscape as a referential axis, this thesis presents a collection of traits - sometimes parallel, sometimes diametrically opposed - which bridge the prevailing analytical gap between the two types of music associated with Cage and Liszt; it thus offers a new way of understanding such music in performance and of recovering an aesthetic which has been neglected for over 100 years.
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Starting with a re-evaluation of current and recent analytical literature and performance practice research on Christou’s cross-media compositions, and Logothetis’ graphic scores, I attempt a critical look at the liminal role occupied by graphic notation, extended performance and intermedia in the construction of a postwar Greek art music canon, and consider methodologies for a more inclusive, analytically grounded account of post-1960s Greek modernism. In so doing, I argue that the aesthetic and stylistic paradigm more suited to analyzing some of these examples, is not so much the ever elusive idea of modernism, but rather, that of experimentalism
The chapter attempts a predominantly sound-based (rather than image-biased) navigation through the complex universe of Godard’s later films. It makes a critical case for recontextualizing his notoriously eclectic approach to the soundtrack by drawing on more experimental aural art forms, such as musique concrète, noise music and sound art. Exploring such paradigms in connection with Godard’s fragmentary aesthetic, as epitomized in his monumental eight-part Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988–98) and his more recent feature-length films, particularly Film socialisme (2010) and Adieu au langage (2014), the relationship between music, noise and silence emerges as a significant, albeit critically underexplored, framework for the assessment of Godard’s unique contribution to contemporary non-narrative cinema
Following Cage (1955/1961), Nyman (1974/1999) and more recent attempts at definition (e.g. Mauceri 1997, Goehr 2008, Saunders 2009, Piekut 2011) experimental music is not so much understood as a musical genre per se; rather, it is a more complex aesthetic and social stance vis-à-vis music-making, inextricably bound with ideas of perpetual questioning (Saladin 2012), and of initiating processes with uncertain end-outcomes and results (Eno 1999). The chapter draws attention to musical experimentation as “an act the outcome of which is unknown” (Cage 1955/1961), in the erratically changing context of post-2009 Athens. The backbone to the investigation focuses on Knot Gallery, a dedicated venue in Athens, active between 2009 and 2013.
for friends, family and local scene heroes who happened to hear her. Then, sometime in early 1992, she dropped it all and went silent for about 20 years.
In 2012, Danae Stefanou, a 33-year-old musicologist based in Athens, decided to search her parents’ basement, retrieve all her childhood tapes and bring Debbie back to life. She found a couple of tapes in good condition, digitised them, scanned handwritten lyrics and memorabilia like the ones that are
reproduced in this chapter, and asked some of her highly-esteemed friends to contribute their own responses to Debbie’s unlikely legacy.
understandings of creativity, in alarming and seemingly irreparable ways.
At the same time, we recognise that the museum, as a public space for including, producing, staging but also problematising people’s subjective approaches to the past, can be a powerful, disruptive locus, where linear, singular narrative conceptions of History are revisited and critically relativized. It can thus act as a fertile context for fostering creative engagement with aspects of the (musical, cultural and social) past and as an open space where students can actively construct and present personal narratives. In the last two sections of this text, we inquire into ways in which music education might be liberated from 'museum music' stereotypes by actually 'taking a ride to the museum', that is, by adopting contemporary museum education modes of practice and bringing critical, open-ended learning approaches into museum spaces. We thus offer two short critical accounts of recent practice-based projects in that direction, carried out at the Archaeological Museum of the city of Volos and the Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens respectively. In discussing these projects, we reflect on the potential of a situated, museum-based or museum-inspired music education, as a remedy against the vacuum of a placeless, instrumentalised, 'museum music' education. On the basis of a “performative, embodied approach” to museum education (Hooper-Greenhill 2007: 192), musical experiences of this kind may contribute to a broader creative recontextualisation of the relationships between sound, context and memory.
What is left out, are the relevant responses and contributions to these developments from artists that did not quite make the aforementioned canon, but contributed to a radical re-appropriation of post-war European modernism through different channels, be it the sound poetry and performance art of Christou’s contemporary Leonidas Christakis (1928-2009), the interdisciplinary collective interventions of Dimosioypalliliko Retire (1984-2006), or the extended notation and intermedia works of younger generation composers (e.g. Alexis Porfiriadis, b. 1971). In examining such cases, the “failed project” narrative of Greek modernism becomes a rather more complex story, and lends itself more easily to a deeper, socially situated analysis. Starting with a re-evaluation of the current analytical literature on Christou’s cross-media compositions, I draw on a series of “liminal paradigms” from the above fields, and consider methodologies for a more inclusive, analytically grounded account of post-1960s Greek modernism.
Starting with a re-evaluation of current and recent analytical literature and performance practice research on Christou’s cross-media compositions, and Logothetis’ graphic scores, I attempt a critical look at the liminal role occupied by graphic notation, extended performance and intermedia in the construction of a postwar Greek art music canon, and consider methodologies for a more inclusive, analytically grounded account of post-1960s Greek modernism. In so doing, I argue that the aesthetic and stylistic paradigm more suited to analyzing some of these examples, is not so much the ever elusive idea of modernism, but rather, that of experimentalism
The chapter attempts a predominantly sound-based (rather than image-biased) navigation through the complex universe of Godard’s later films. It makes a critical case for recontextualizing his notoriously eclectic approach to the soundtrack by drawing on more experimental aural art forms, such as musique concrète, noise music and sound art. Exploring such paradigms in connection with Godard’s fragmentary aesthetic, as epitomized in his monumental eight-part Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988–98) and his more recent feature-length films, particularly Film socialisme (2010) and Adieu au langage (2014), the relationship between music, noise and silence emerges as a significant, albeit critically underexplored, framework for the assessment of Godard’s unique contribution to contemporary non-narrative cinema
Following Cage (1955/1961), Nyman (1974/1999) and more recent attempts at definition (e.g. Mauceri 1997, Goehr 2008, Saunders 2009, Piekut 2011) experimental music is not so much understood as a musical genre per se; rather, it is a more complex aesthetic and social stance vis-à-vis music-making, inextricably bound with ideas of perpetual questioning (Saladin 2012), and of initiating processes with uncertain end-outcomes and results (Eno 1999). The chapter draws attention to musical experimentation as “an act the outcome of which is unknown” (Cage 1955/1961), in the erratically changing context of post-2009 Athens. The backbone to the investigation focuses on Knot Gallery, a dedicated venue in Athens, active between 2009 and 2013.
for friends, family and local scene heroes who happened to hear her. Then, sometime in early 1992, she dropped it all and went silent for about 20 years.
In 2012, Danae Stefanou, a 33-year-old musicologist based in Athens, decided to search her parents’ basement, retrieve all her childhood tapes and bring Debbie back to life. She found a couple of tapes in good condition, digitised them, scanned handwritten lyrics and memorabilia like the ones that are
reproduced in this chapter, and asked some of her highly-esteemed friends to contribute their own responses to Debbie’s unlikely legacy.
understandings of creativity, in alarming and seemingly irreparable ways.
At the same time, we recognise that the museum, as a public space for including, producing, staging but also problematising people’s subjective approaches to the past, can be a powerful, disruptive locus, where linear, singular narrative conceptions of History are revisited and critically relativized. It can thus act as a fertile context for fostering creative engagement with aspects of the (musical, cultural and social) past and as an open space where students can actively construct and present personal narratives. In the last two sections of this text, we inquire into ways in which music education might be liberated from 'museum music' stereotypes by actually 'taking a ride to the museum', that is, by adopting contemporary museum education modes of practice and bringing critical, open-ended learning approaches into museum spaces. We thus offer two short critical accounts of recent practice-based projects in that direction, carried out at the Archaeological Museum of the city of Volos and the Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens respectively. In discussing these projects, we reflect on the potential of a situated, museum-based or museum-inspired music education, as a remedy against the vacuum of a placeless, instrumentalised, 'museum music' education. On the basis of a “performative, embodied approach” to museum education (Hooper-Greenhill 2007: 192), musical experiences of this kind may contribute to a broader creative recontextualisation of the relationships between sound, context and memory.
What is left out, are the relevant responses and contributions to these developments from artists that did not quite make the aforementioned canon, but contributed to a radical re-appropriation of post-war European modernism through different channels, be it the sound poetry and performance art of Christou’s contemporary Leonidas Christakis (1928-2009), the interdisciplinary collective interventions of Dimosioypalliliko Retire (1984-2006), or the extended notation and intermedia works of younger generation composers (e.g. Alexis Porfiriadis, b. 1971). In examining such cases, the “failed project” narrative of Greek modernism becomes a rather more complex story, and lends itself more easily to a deeper, socially situated analysis. Starting with a re-evaluation of the current analytical literature on Christou’s cross-media compositions, I draw on a series of “liminal paradigms” from the above fields, and consider methodologies for a more inclusive, analytically grounded account of post-1960s Greek modernism.
Much as the “dusty work” that Parker calls for may seem like the natural conclusion to a lengthy strife for public recognition and acceptance, the path towards “recent academic respectability” is hardly neutral or innocuous, and its purported universality also begs serious questions. How, and to what extent are previously undocumented historic practices becoming instrumentalized, reified and normalized in the interests of present-day, institutionally sanctioned accounts and narratives? What is left out of such “dusty work”, and why? How do current experimental and improvisatory initiatives negotiate their changing social representation, and what is at stake in this negotiation?
Drawing on recent participatory fieldwork as well as archival research on lesser known aspects of historic and current experimentalism in Greece, I focus on a number of examples that suggest space, and the articulation of spatial politics, as crucial metaphors in the way dominant ideologies and pervasive political metaphors are silently embedded, actively contested or aesthetically reformulated in the praxis of musical experimentation. In concluding, I attempt a broader examination of free improvisation and experimental composition as acts of radical dissent.
Η ομιλία έγινε στα πλαίσια του συνεδρίου "To Tριπλό Ταξίδι: Mουσικές Ανταλλαγές Ανάμεσα στην Ελλάδα, τη Γερμανία και τη Γαλλία από το 1945 εως τις μέρες μας", Goethe Institut & Institut Français, Aθήνα 27-29 Νοεμβρίου 2013.
Bίντεο διαθέσιμο στο https://vimeo.com/80608948 (έναρξη ομιλίας στο 1:34:05)
Full talk can be accessed at http://vitarte.mus.auth.gr/en/archives/1202
Given the prevalence of this paradigm, it seems that behind the man/machine dualism there might be a more complex and significant force field. There are unresolved tensions between intentionality and unintentionality, between the need for control and the urge to escape it, between improvisation as a here-and-now, moment-to-moment creative practice and history as a retrospective, summative discipline that enables us to contextualize and situate a practice in relation to specific (and very uneasy) geographical, social and political agendas. In acknowledging this force field, new questions arise: What kind of transcendence is evoked through an “improvising mechanism”? What does the mechanistic metaphor say about the cultures that sustain it? Are we even capable of thinking beyond this paradigm, or are “people systems” the only way to account for people improvising together?
Τhe talk was presented at the Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens, as part of the invited panel "Philosophical Issues" with George Lewis. Full video available at http://secure.sgt.gr/en/multimedia/20,4,525
and place, to be represented in the minds of listening subjects. By way of illustration, the thesis investigates certain piano works by John Cage, which explore the very nature of performance in order to generate a reactive process between composition, performance space, and audiences. It then argues that Cage's aesthetic position is by no means an isolated contemporary phenomenon. On the contrary, its implications were manifest throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, not only in Satie - an acknowledged influence on Cage's music - but also in the music of such composers as Messiaen and Debussy. Even earlier, however, one encounters the especially pertinent case of Franz Liszt and the Annees de Pelerinage. By superimposing Cage's perspective onto Liszt's explorations of performance as evocation, common patterns are revealed between the two composers' idiosyncratic - and, seemingly, mutually exclusive - styles. Using the notion of landscape as a
referential axis, this thesis presents a collection of traits - sometimes parallel, sometimes diametrically opposed - which bridge the prevailing analytical gap between the two types of music associated with Cage and Liszt; it thus offers a new way of understanding such music in performance and of recovering an aesthetic which has been neglected for over 100 years.