Artistic Processes in Music Performance

A Research Area Calling for Inter-Disciplinary Collaboration

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to a discussion about collaborative approaches in research into artistic processes in the domain of music. A description of the difficulty of clearly describing the area of artistic research forms the basis for addressing questions of disciplinarity and ownership. This leads to a discussion from a Swedish perspective about relations between artistic research in the domain of music, musicology and music education research. Especially, in-house collaboration between artistic research
and music education research, both hosted in Swedish schools of music, will be brought into focus. Possible roles of music performers and researchers are exemplified by two research projects, the methodological findings of which show that collaborative exploration based on a partly shared pre-understanding helped reveal aspects that would not have been revealed by the performer or the researcher individually. It is then proposed that there is a need for further collaboration between performing/researching artists and scientific researchers – a challenge to schools of music hosting both disciplines. This, in turn, raises questions about the future development of artistic research in music, such as whose artistic processes may be subject to exploration, which roles performers may take in artistic research, and who may be entitled to conduct artistic research.