Melbourne Conservatorium of Music - Theses
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ItemLearning Britten's Violin Concerto: a reflexive & collaborative approach to interpretation( 2019)Performance manuals are seemingly divided into two approaches: those that provide the reader technical instruction on the execution of a work or works and those that adopt a more self-reflective investigation into personal performance practice. Using a critical, reflexive approach, this thesis examines the development of a highly-personal interpretive methodology that aims to create personal authenticity in my interpretation of Britten’s Violin Concerto through the cultivation of a combined composer-performer perspective that stimulates my technical decisions, thus developing a framework I can freely apply to a variety of contexts within my broader performance-practice. Through a detailed investigation, Part One analyses significant events and experiences that shaped Britten’s early life, developing a lens to inform my interpretation of the score. Part Two demonstrates how my interpretation of Britten’s compositional craft and the specific technical decisions I arrived at in my practice supports the narrative uncovered in Part One. This study aims to provide an example to performers looking to apply a methodology to their own practice to assist in creating highly personal interpretations that attempt to honour the intentions of both composer and performer.
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ItemCollaborative songwriting with children experiencing homelessness and family violence to understand their resources( 2018)This thesis uses a range of creative and inductive scholarly approaches to highlight the creative resources that children bring to research, as well as the range of resources that they draw upon in the face of adversity. Children’s voices are central to this research and their contributions will be used to inform future music therapy practice, the homelessness and family violence system, and child welfare research. The majority of the literature about children experiencing homelessness and family violence focuses on reporting the perceived ‘problems’ and ‘challenges’ faced by children, with little acknowledgement of children’s personal resources and capacities in times of crisis (Fairchild, McFerran & Thompson, 2017). As a result, children are represented through the lens of risk which in turn impacts the ways that they are viewed, understood and responded to by professionals, researchers and the service system. Drawing upon participatory, resource-oriented and arts-based approaches, this research seeks to balance the representation of children in this context by exploring their resources and what helps them to ‘do well’ throughout their experiences of homelessness and family violence. Songwriting was used as a collaborative research method to co-construct knowledge with children through group and individual interviews. The children were engaged as co-researchers in generating and interpreting the data, and in representing the results. The group interviews focused on what music means to children in this context and through group songwriting the children identified that music offers an escape from the outside world and provides hope that the future will be better. The individual songwriting interviews were used to expand the breadth of this examination of resources and the children described a range of supports, such as friends, family, sport, pets, journaling, hope and creativity. Six identified themes explore the role that these resources play in children’s lives: seeking refuge, wanting to feel safe, hoping for a better future, feeling cared for, being self determined, and protecting self and others. In order to reflect further on the results of the collaborative song writing projects, two additional reflexive projects sought to provide further depth and integration of knowledge. The first was a collaborative article written with an 11-year-old child (‘Malakai Mraz’) who believed that learning to play the drums in music therapy changed his life. The process of writing the article provided an avenue for reflecting upon our experiences of engaging in music therapy together. In the final reflexive project I used songwriting as an arts-based method to explore my own experience of being involved in this research. I used concepts of vicarious trauma and vicarious resilience to discuss how arts-based approaches might also support other researchers to process their own experiences of becoming immersed in deeply personal research data.
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Item'A universal art, an art for all'?: The reception of Richard Wagner in the Parisian Press, 1933–1944( 2016)From the time that Wagner began to feature as a subject of interest in the French press, writers, critics, and journalists used their discussions of the composer, his music and his writings to articulate ideas about France and Germany. Debate about Wagner became a means to examine national identity, musical and cultural identity, and the Franco-German relationship. This thesis examines the reception of Richard Wagner through the lens of the Parisian press between 1933 and 1944. It follows a body of literature that investigates the reception of Wagner in the French press, particularly in relation to how it reflects upon French identity and the Franco-German relationship. It considers the ways in which the French continued to use Wagner to discuss nation, identity and culture during the period of the Third Reich, and the extent to which Wagner reception from the 1930s and the Occupation interacted with earlier French reception of Wagner. The thesis also considers the question of continuity and rupture, both between the period 1933–44 and previous periods, and between 1933–39 and the Occupation. It examines the extent to which the dramatic change in the French political landscape—which took place when France was invaded by German troops in the summer of 1940—affected the press reception of Wagner, and what this can tell us about how the French nation thought about itself and its relationship with Germany. The thesis includes an Introduction, followed by five chapters and a short Conclusion. The chapters are organised both chronologically and thematically, covering two main time periods during the Third Reich: 1933–39, and 1940–44. The thesis draws predominantly on sources from the Parisian press, including daily newspapers and weekly or monthly periodicals, supplemented by a limited number of other sources, including musicological and music literature, and concert programme archives. Although the study does not rely heavily on any particular theoretical model, it is situated within the domain of reception theory. This study argues, through an examination of themes emerging from the Parisian press, that Parisians used Wagner to confront Nazism, grapple with the idea of rapprochement, situate France within a potential New Europe, understand past Franco-German conflict, manage life under the Occupation, and come to terms with the policy of Collaboration.
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ItemMomentum: experiential development in music composition( 2014)Momentum is an experiential, cumulative music composition and blogging project, conducted throughout 2012. For 366 consecutive days I collected and recorded sonic material that comprised musical and non-musical field recordings, intentional and incidental found sounds, snippets of musical works, and improvisations. I then sculpted and layered the recordings utilising a digital audio workstation and an arsenal of audio editing tools. The outcome is a four hour-long sound-art work. I invited contributions to the project, and as a result more than 60 people from all over the world collaborated on Momentum, providing recordings to be included in the project. Momentum was conceived as an exercise in experimental and experiential composition. The project was created sequentially and chronologically, with new musical material being introduced and intermingling always with the existing material at the end of the work. I lived Momentum as I created it; it became a part of my everyday life and the project and my lived experiences influenced one another. The goal in conducting Momentum was to explore cumulative compositional processes via a method of self-imposed disciplined practice. This involved building, over one year, hundreds of micro compositions that were then disassembled and recomposed into one musical work in 12 movements, one for each month of the year. Each completed movement is 15-30 minutes in length. Via a blog and other online platforms my audience were able to engage with both the day-to-day processes and practices involved in the smaller pieces as well as the larger monthly movements as they were completed. Momentum investigates the results of a disciplined and habitual approach to art making; a non traditional and community oriented compositional method which is self-derivative, chronological and directly cumulative. Momentum was created within strict guidelines, via a process whereby each day’s work was partly derived from and informed by the previous day’s work, but where the majority of the creative material was unknown in advance. Momentum examines the role of audience in the creation of a body of work, through transparency of process and by opening this process up to feedback and collaboration. This exegesis is reflective of the process that I used to develop Momentum; the art and research framework grew and developed simultaneously. Momentum has since gone on to encompass a 30 minute album, created cumulatively over one month in Istanbul, a 4 day and night live performance event in the Melbourne Fringe Festival, and an ongoing, online community sound art collective. The work-in-progress was (and remains) accessible via several online sources, and the audio is free to listen to, download and re-purpose within the confines of a Creative Commons License. I continue to invite feedback, comments, audience participation and derivative works via the music site SoundCloud , my blog , email, Facebook , Twitter and other social networking media.
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ItemUnderstanding and articulating the processa and meaning of collaboration in participatory music projects with marginalised young people and their supporting communities( 2013)Participatory approaches are increasingly emphasised in music therapy, advocating collaboration with participants for empowerment and social change. Participatory philosophy underpins Community Music Therapy (CoMT) and is the theoretical framework for the study presented in this thesis. To date, CoMT theorists have advocated strongly for participatory approaches in music therapy to promote health and wellbeing in communities (Stige, Andsell, Elefant & Pavlicevic, 2010; Stige & Aaro, 2012), and a growing number of case study examples offer contextual examples of participatory practice in music therapy. Whilst collaboration is frequently referred to as an underlying principle and feature of participatory music therapy practice, there is a notable lack of literature that practically examines the process of collaboration with communities beyond single case examples, or the meaning of that collaboration for the community participants themselves. Rolvsjord (2010) has identified collaboration in music therapy as a shared, dialogic process of negotiation between music therapist and participants that is characterised by equality, mutuality and active participation in decision-making. In CoMT projects that are, by nature, outwards-facing and ecologically focussed, engaging in a genuinely shared and dialogic collaboration with community participants can be complex and challenging. This thesis describes a study that aimed to describe this challenge. In this thesis I present learnings from an action research project in Melbourne, Australia. Three communities supporting marginalised young people engaged in participatory music projects with a music therapist. In repeating cycles of action and reflection, community participants and I worked together to plan, develop and implement their music projects. Alongside this practical decision-making, we reflected periodically on the process of collaborating together and the meaning of the process for the participants involved. Throughout the process, these reflections with individual communities were combined and shared to develop an overall understanding of collaborative process between the three groups. Comparative analysis of the process of collaboration with the three participating communities focussed on two key areas: to understand and articulate the process of collaboration with communities supporting marginalised young people; and, to understand what aspects of the collaborative process were meaningful for the participants involved. Using these key areas as a frame, learnings were interpreted from the empirical material in this study using an emergent, iterative analysis process. The analysis of empirical material identified that collaboration in participatory music projects has the potential to promote positive growth for participants in the form of strengthened connections with peers, increased self-esteem and confidence and empowerment. Learnings further indicated that this potential for empowerment is mediated by the degree of alignment between the structure of the chosen music project and particular contextual and individual factors, supporting a need for active and engaged collaboration to maximise this alignment, and subsequently the positive growth potential of participatory music projects. Based on the interpretation of empirical material, I propose a structure of collaborative process that accounts for contextual variation between communities. This structure is based on three interpersonal interactions between music therapists and community collaborators, and highlights vital characteristics of collaboration. Critical aspects include the importance of a ‘hangout period’ prior to active collaboration, and the ongoing nature of negotiations within the collaborative process. Implications from these learnings are proposed in the form of a new understanding of collaboration in music therapy - as a positive growth practice. This understanding is based on underlying principles of shared power and mutual responsibility. Particular emphasis is given to the critical and under-explored role that participant investment plays in music therapy collaborations.
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ItemMusic and collaboration: rapport, leadership and the role of the individual in collaborative processes( 2010)This research investigates the collaborative processes that occur when new creative work is born, with a particular focus on musical collaborations. This thesis is based upon the responses to interviews that were conducted with 25 artists currently engaged in professional collaborative arts practice. Each artist was asked to define collaboration, then to give details of past collaborative experiences. All of the artists’ answers and experiences varied, but there were three areas that were of particular interest to all of the participants. These were: the relevance (if any) of rapport within collaborative arts practice, the role of the individual in collaborations, and the place of leadership in collaborations. This thesis shows that many of the artists involved in this study valued some kind of personal rapport within a collaborative project. A number of the artists claimed that it was not possible to separate artistic and personal rapport, and that they only wished to work with artists with whom they had that kind of rapport. But in the absence of a close personal relationship many of the participants in this study valued mutual respect, openness and understanding of personal differences within collaborative processes. Each artist had different experiences of the roles of the individual and of leadership within collaborative projects. This study found that the answers to these questions varied mostly depending on the individual artist’s role in a particular project, their understanding of that role and their relationship to others in the collaboration. All the artists agreed that it is of utmost importance to be clear of one’s role in collaboration in order to function successfully and creatively with other artists. Many of the artists involved in this study also agreed that if a collaborative project is to be led then it should be done so in a non-dictatorial fashion, and that if this is not possible then the project should not be labeled ‘collaborative’. With this in mind some of the participants in this study amended their definition of collaboration throughout the interview process, as close examination of their experiences sometimes didn’t match up with their initial thoughts on the subject. The overall results of this thesis are many and varied, and give a detailed insight into current thinking on collaborative processes within music.
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ItemConstructing the collective consciousness: individual player identity within the collective jazz ensemble( 2009)This study investigates the role of the individual improviser within the ensemble context as a means of observing the interplay of the ‘creative language’ between individuals and its manifestation within a group dynamic. Criteria as exemplified by the Miles Davis Quintet were used as a means to ascertain the quality, level of interaction, elasticity of compositions, ensemble ecology, musicianship, playfulness, role-play, and other relevant factors in an improvised music setting. The attributes of the Miles Davis Quintet were used to examine the individual and collective identities within the By a Thread ensemble, with the prime intention being to facilitate the construction and development of a collective consciousness within the ensemble. The research topic arose from the author’s aspiration to obtain a deeper connection and sense of community with other practitioners in which to undertake a collective musical journey. The purpose of approaching the research from a practitioner led perspective was to obtain a greater understanding of the author’s art, to achieve insight into the processes of improvisation, and to create contemporary jazz that was inventive in structure and detail. A review was conducted on current literature pertaining to collective creativity, collaboration and improvisation; additionally, the interaction, creativity, and individual and collective identities within the Miles Davis Quintet. An in-depth examination of this distinguished modern jazz ensemble was undertaken to elucidate their relevance to this research. The preparation, processes and development of the By a Thread ensemble were analysed to establish outcomes for this study. This included an examination of the ensemble’s common language, compositions, rehearsals, cues, co-creation, live performances, elasticizing of the musical parameters, role-play, ecology, exploration and risk taking, simultaneous improvisation, contrasting voices, repertoire variety, performance environments and recording. The process of identifying key attributes of interaction, play, identity, and creativity of the Davis quintet as a model for By a Thread resulted in tangible strategies and outcomes. The strategies facilitated the development of By a Thread’s identity, collective consciousness, cues, co-created language, elasticity of compositional parameters and approach to performance.