Distributed Creativity: Collaboration and Improvisation in Contemporary Music
- Submitting institution
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University of Oxford
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 1864
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- ISBN
- 9780199355914
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- February
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This volume is the most substantial output from the 5-year ‘Creative Practice in Contemporary Concert Music’ project (Clarke: PI; Doffman PDRA), funded by the AHRC as part of the Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (Clarke: Associate Director). Four chapters (the Introduction and chapters 3, 6 and 9) are authored/co-authored by members of the project team (employed by the UoA), along with five ‘Interventions’ (by West, Payne, Lim, Thurlow, Heyde et al.) by research associates who were involved in composition/performance projects directly funded by the project.
The stated research aims were: i) to study in detail the creative interactions and collaborations between performers and composers in the specific context of preparing and presenting performances of new works; ii) to examine a range of notation, preparation and performance practices in contemporary music; iii) to interrogate ‘distributed creativity’ between composer and performer in contemporary performance, and in so doing to revive a broad notion of improvisation that has been side-lined in the history of performance.
The research process involved commissioning two composition/performance projects and joining three other pre-existing large-scale projects so as to document and interrogate the creative process in each case. This included extensive audio and video recording, and interviews with composers, performers and improvisers (~100 hours of AV material) selected parts of which were analysed using grounded theory methods. With the collaboration of another project-funded research associate (Timmers) audio data from workshop/rehearsal and performance events were also analysed using specialised analysis software (Praat; SonicVisualiser) and quantitative statistical methods (Clarke, Doffman & Timmers JRMA 2016). Reviewed (Dunsby Music & Letters 2019) as “a glittering tribute to the riches of the human imagination” and the series to which it contributes as “one of the more important publication ventures of our musicological era.”
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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