Room for interpretation

methodological aspects of a music research project

Authors

  • Sverker Jullander
  • Petter Sundkvist
  • Jon Berg
  • Helge Kjekshus
  • Karin Nelson

Keywords:

Musical performance, musical interpretation, artistic research, methodology, room acoustics, variable acoustics, Studio Acusticum

Abstract

The artistic research project ‘Room for interpretation’ addresses questions concerning the influence of room acoustics on the performance of Western art music from the performers’ perspective. The empirical core of the project is a number of experimental performance sessions carried out in Studio Acusticum, Piteå, a concert hall with mechanically variable acoustics. The authors discuss issues relating to the project’s design and methodology; the focus of the article is thus the research process rather than the results. A presentation of the project, its preconditions, goals, design and methodology is followed by an overview of previous research, mostly in acoustic science, on the same or closely related topics. In the third part of the article, characteristics of the present project are compared to those of the previous studies. In the following part, ’Room for interpretation’ is related to the ongoing discussion on the purposes and means of artistic research. The authors argue that the project, while showing certain similarities to previous studies, differs considerably with respect to aims and important aspects of design, and that its characteristic features agree well with those usually regarded as typical of artistic research. The article concludes with a summary of the most important results concerning: differences between performers’ reactions in the live situation and when listening to their own recordings; differences between chamber ensembles, conducted ensembles and soloists as to the influence of the acoustics on the performance; and the prevalence of sound over other musical parameters in performers’ comments on their recorded performances.

Author Biographies

Sverker Jullander

Sverker Jullander is Senior Professor (from 2006 to 2018 Professor and Chair) of Musical Performance at Piteå School of Music, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. Upon graduating as a church musician and obtaining his Soloist Diploma, he pursued further organ studies in Cologne and Amsterdam. From 1985 to 2006 he taught organ and organ pedagogy at the University of Gothenburg, where he received a PhD in musicology in 1997. A founding member of the University’s organ research centre GOArt, he was its research director from 2001 to 2006. Between 2009 and 2012 he was Director of
Research Education at the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg. Sverker Jullander has given organ recitals in many countries, in addition to CDs and radio broadcasts. His research concerns especially organ and church music from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Petter Sundkvist

Petter Sundkvist is Professor of Orchestral Conducting at Piteå School of Music, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. He has appeared as conductor with major symphony orchestras in numerous European countries and has recorded more than 40 CDs. Sundkvist is strongly committed to contemporary art music, and he has premiered a large number of works with, among others, the chamber ensemble Norrbotten NEO, which he founded in 2007. He has conducted some thirty operas, equally distributed among Swedish opera institutions and chamber operas. Petter Sundkvist is in charge of the education in Western art music at Luleå University of Technology.

Jon Berg

Jan Berg is Associate Professor of Audio Engineering at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, where he is active in research and education in sound production, with a special emphasis on sound quality assessment. Much of his research is conducted in collaboration with other disciplines and enterprises, involving tests of sound coding systems, loudness measurements, the development of listening tests and methods for the assessment of sound quality, as well as studies on the influence of acoustics and audio systems on musical quality. He is active in the Audio Engineering Society (AES), in technical committees, as a lecturer and reviewer, and as chair of scientific conferences

Helge Kjekshus

Helge Kjekshus is Assistant Professor of piano at Piteå School of Music, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. Upon graduation from the Norwegian State Academy of Music, he continued his studies at the Grieg Academy of Music in Bergen and at Yale University, New Haven. Kjekshus has performed as a soloist with St. Petersburg State Symphony Orchestra, Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra, Bern Symphony Orchestra, Copenhagen Philharmonic, and with major orchestras throughout Scandinavia and the Baltic. He has worked with conductors such as Paavo Berglund, Dimitri Kitayenko, Alexander Dimitriev, Alexander Kantorow, Janos Furst, Owain Arwel Hughes and Andras Ligeti. As a recitalist Kjekshus has performed at international chamber music festivals and in recitals in Norway, Germany, Switzerland, UK, North America, Korea and Japan. A devoted chamber musician, he has performed with Ana Chumachenko, Paul Meyer, Truls Mørk, Henning Kraggerud and Boris Pergamenchikow.

Karin Nelson

Karin Nelson is Professor of Organ and Church Music at the Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo, and at the University of Gothenburg. Her PhD dissertation in musicology, Improvisation and pedagogy through Heinrich Scheidemann’s Magnificat settings (2010), focused on how musicians of different epochs and backgrounds have related to notated music and how they use written compositions as a basis for improvisations. In parallel with recitals and teaching, Karin Nelson has been committed to an intense experimental artistic development work focusing on dialogue of genres, traditions and contexts. At the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo she has carried out research and development on early toccatas as sources of inspiration and sources for improvisation. Another dimension of Karin Nelson’s developmental work is addressing pedagogy as a moving force in music culture: departing from sources like Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck and Dieterich Buxtehude, she has explored the eventuality of their music being notated mainly as a consequence of a primarily educational context.

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Published

2019-03-25

How to Cite

Jullander, S., Sundkvist, P., Berg, J., Kjekshus, H., & Nelson, K. (2019). Room for interpretation: methodological aspects of a music research project. Svensk Tidskrift för Musikforskning Swedish Journal of Music Research, 100, 89–115. Retrieved from https://publicera.kb.se/stm-sjm/article/view/33448

Issue

Vol. 100 (2018)

Section

Articles

License

Authors contributing to STM-SJM retain copyright of their work, with first publication rights granted to Svenska samfundet för musikforskning. Read the journal's full Copyright- and Licensing Policy.

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