My aim was to show how the work of performers and composers as process can be recognised in its various manifestations – collecting data, using the literature, processing the data, interpreting it, etc. – as equivalent to the work that researchers do, and to show how the outcomes of composition and performance – portfolios, CDs, radio recordings, DVDs, live concerts, etc. – can be assessed in ways similar to the outcomes of research. That involved my saying by whom such outcomes might be evaluated, and how: what was being looked for in the way of knowledge of existing national and international sources, original contribution, technical proficiency in presentation or execution. The evaluators, in a scholar-rating process also needed, I suggested, the context of national and international journalistic or academic criticism in order to see work in a context of its reception. That would have to be supplied by the people applying for rating. This aspect would not apply however, to the integrated PhD in music; but other aspects would.

The three major things that I think came out of my NRF research were those of equivalence in work as process, equivalence in work as outcome, and criteria for assessing work as outcome. In the article I also had a lot of fun situating the way practice was governed in South Africa by the exigencies of what Bourdieu has called the limited field of cultural production. I tried, in other words, to show that music practice in academe was a very small field exposed to continual change, especially sensitive to socio-political change, and that all outcomes really had to be measured against those changes. “Nothing happens in a vacuum” was my larger message: no sound is entirely innocent, nor can it be entirely divorced from the larger international picture.

The imperatives that Winfried reminds us of in his introduction also remind us that “practice-based research” and/or “practice as research” continues to “gain currency” as he puts it – i.e. it’s never a done deal: discussion about what practice-based research is and how we apply that knowledge continually changes, as well. This gives us a fourth idea: the moving goalpost. For paradoxically, we have ongoing national and international debate on the one hand about what practice-based research is, and on the other hand we have university regulations cast in print (if not stone) by which candidates register and are examined. Thus the candidate is to some extent deciding all the time where to kick the ball, and the teachers – never mind the examiners – are always trying to decide where to put the goalpost down.

To try and offer something for us to chew here, in this tricky debate, I focus only on what music performance and research are and what they do, leaving out composition, which I think is a slightly different case in music practice, with parallels for example with creative writing that performance does not have.

The essence of the NRF’s own research question was: what do music practitioners do that equates to what researchers do? I cannot always separate process from outcome, myself: just as these are difficult to rigidly separate in research, so they are also in performance. You do research for 3 years and then what comes out is also called “research”, an object bound in a book and submitted electronically to go on the research internet. You practice for three years and then what comes out is a practical performance or set of performances – another kind of object for assessment. But the latter seems far more ephemeral than the outcome of thesis. Performance is also likely to have a far stronger affective mode of delivery even if it’s not an emotional experience. (Reading a thesis is rarely an affective experience.)

Using the metaphor of currency, I suggest two paradigms for unpicking how performance and research, with all their similarities and differences, might cohabit the same space in ways that are useful to our discussion.

The first is the paradigm of two currencies. Research is used by one country – Germany, say – and performance by another – Switzerland. You cross the border without a passport because both are members of the EU (in other words, the topic of both is “music”), but one country uses Euros and the other Francs. One person plays a recital one minute and hands in a lengthy piece of critical writing the next. You exchange currency after crossing the border, and you usually have to pay in one or other currency, not both simultaneously (unless you are in the transit lounge getting rid of your change).

Research here is equivalent to performance in many ways: their value is roughly the same but works differently in different “countries”. Both performance and research use “the literature”. In research this means knowing what’s been written on your topic. In performance this means knowing a particular repertoire within the practice and knowing some of the scholarly literature on that repertoire. Literature or repertoire are points of departure in both cases, for new ideas. But performance also works directly with existing literature: the repertoire is not only studied, a small portion of it is performed, which implies it is practiced for hundreds of hours and mastered technically. This is a very different kind of “knowing”: knowing a very limited portion of your literature extremely well. The originality of performance cannot be assessed only in terms of what has been added on as “new work” extending the old in terms of ideas formulated as words, but has to be assessed in terms of how that small portion of the existing literature has been reimagined and re-presented, so that it sounds like a new idea of that work (Lucia 2005:86). And assessing originality requires having criteria to measure newness, in the case of both research and performance.

Both deploy methods by which data is built up: in the computer, in the mind, and in the case of performance, in the body. Performance requires conventional research too: reading history or theory relating to the music being performed, reading about interpretation, analysing scores, etc. Both research and performance require systematic thought and interpretation.

So, it is not difficult to find equivalents in process. Nor in product, either: a thesis is the outcome of systematic thought applied to a body of data in order to interpret it; a piano recital is the outcome of systematic thought and physical effort applied to a repertoire of music in order to interpret it. One major difference, as I keep pointing out, is that performance also, at doctoral level, requires some conventional research as well, because what is being aimed for is a well-informed performance, not just a technical display. With a PhD in performance we are not simply looking for a repetition of another performance but an unusual, out of the ordinary performance.

These two currencies – the currency of practice and the currency of conventional research thus have many things in common, have a similar value, share some processes, can buy the same things. But they operate in different countries, or on different terrain. There is a border to be crossed from one to the other. Not only for the candidate but also for the teacher and the examiner (or other readers and listeners). The critical mode of intellectual written research and the affective mode of performance practice are not the same: you not only cross a border when you go from one to the other, and then operate in another currency, you have to cross a border in order to use the other currency.

The idea of equivalence, for me, breaks down here. You can be incredibly well prepared, physically fit, well informed and well read about every aspect of the music you’re going to play, and you can write a brilliant thesis or programme note that says things no-one has said before; but the moment you sit at the piano you cross into another country, and you have to pay with the other currency. Your examiner also has to change currencies. Where, then, is the “integration” between these two things? They seem to come close at many points, yet they are never the same. And what is the transit lounge, in performance-based research? What is that grey area between one country and another where two currencies can be used to pay for the same thing?

The second paradigm I offer is in many ways less problematic but it is also less concrete, more abstract. It is where performance and research are seen as one and the same currency, but within this currency they are two sides of the same coin, or note. Here it is not a question of equivalence between currencies, or the value of either currency – here we are not even paying for anything. Here we are trying to address the far more difficult question of how we see heads and tails at the same time. They are so close that they are in fact one and the same object, but one has to flip the coin to see the other side, or put two coins side by side, to see both sides. However fast you flip the coin, seeing both at once is an illusion, and having two coins is a compromise.

I tried to think of examples that would illustrate these two paradigms, drawn from my own experience.

The first – two currencies – I experienced when I performed the Schumann Piano Concerto in 1996, with the KZNPO and Alan Stephenson conducting. I had done a fair amount of research on Schumann – his chamber music was the topic of my doctoral dissertation  in the late 1970s – and Stephenson also introduced me to the work of Stewart Young on Schumann’s tempi and metronome markings. Based on our research, we decided to present this old warhorse in a new way, with a much faster first movement and a much slower third. When I explained my intentions to the orchestra at the first rehearsal, by the way, they were met with incomprehension by some people: the deputy principal violin tuned to the rest of the orchestra and said, “who does she think she is, telling us how to play this?”. But other people were very interested, and with Allan’s help we pulled through. It was not a brilliant performance, but it was an unusual one. It is an example of how research feeds into performance, the two currencies exchanged once the border is crossed as you go on stage to play the performance.

My second example – two sides of the same coin – is giving a solo lunch-hour recital at Howard College Theatre in 1985, where I had decided to present some of my own transcriptions of Abdullah Ibrahim’s music in the context of Skriabin – I think it was Skriabin – and Debussy, after beginning with the Mozart Sonata K310. It was an experiment in re-situating Ibrahim as a “classical” composer and at the same time reflecting on the jazz elements in Debussy: in deliberately integrating classical and jazz in the same programme without resorting to Gershwin or obviously “jazz influenced” classical music. Moreover, the Ibrahim pieces were my transcriptions, so I had something invested in them aside from playing them. I expressed my aims entirely through music – there were no critical programme notes exploring and explaining what I was doing to the audience. “Did it work” I asked Darius Brubeck and others, afterwards. “Yes, it worked beautifully”, they said. And that was all. The playing wasn’t world-class, but the recital expressed an over-arching idea that enabled the listener – especially the informed listener – to glimpse both side of the coin at the same time, flipping back and forth between them so fast that the illusion of simultaneity was quite strong.

Will either of these paradigms, in many ways similar but of a different order and leading to differently expressed outcomes, help us to bridge the divide as I have sketched it here, between conventional research and practice, in the same degree?

(Posted on behalf of Christine Lucia)

The purpose of this presentation is to give a brief outline of some important developments in PBR internationally, and to focus the debate in the South African context. Borgdorff, writing from a European perspective, highlights the fact that the international debates around PBR display elements of both philosophy (especially in terms of epistemology, ontology and methodology) and of education politics and strategies (Borgdorff 2007:1). This binary structure suggests the form of this presentation: philosophical considerations pertinent to PBR in music will first be examined, followed by a delineation of the position of PBR in education politics, both internationally and specifically in South Africa. In general, the focus will be on PBR and doctoral studies.

I will begin the discussion of some philosophical aspects of PBR by presenting a possible definition of the term. Linda Candy from the University of Technology, Sydney, defines PBR as follows (Candy 2006):

Practice-based research is an original investigation undertaken in order to gain new knowledge partly by means of practice and the outcomes of that practice. In a doctoral thesis, claims of originality and contribution to knowledge may be demonstrated through creative outcomes in the form of designs, music, digital media, performances and exhibitions. Whilst the significance and context of the claims are described in words, a full understanding can only be obtained with direct reference to the outcomes.

This general definition delineates two important aspects of PBR: first, that the ‘contribution to new knowledge may be demonstrated through creative outcomes’; second, that the ‘significance and context’ of these contributions are presented in the form of written text, thus creating the possibility of peer review.

According to Sligter, research in the humanities should not be limited ‘to the verifiable knowledge … as sought after by the exact sciences’ (Sligter 2007:41). The knowledge that PBR engages is generated by practice, and is to some extent embodied in the creative outcome of the work. In this sense, knowledge generated through PBR can be said to be both perceptual and conceptual: in music, the initial research questions or problems are suggested through the personal experiences of the performer while engaged with practice, and followed up in a reflexive and methodical manner. The outcomes of the research are presented in some form of discursive medium, usually accompanied by practical work (in the case of a doctoral thesis, audio-visual recordings of performances could be included).

A recurrent issue in the PBR debate is the difference between PBR and ‘pure practice’. Schippers states (Schippers 2007:35):

We can easily identify research methods and patterns in almost any progression towards a performance, from defining a general idea or concept, to the initial choice of repertoire/material, to research into books, scores, records or memory, to final choices of approach, repertoire and material. In processes commonly identified as research, these stages would correspond to defining the research question, literature review, and choice of methodology.

The issue, therefore, is not so much with the nature of the processes followed by performers as opposed to researchers, but with the implicit nature of the knowledge gained through practice. What distinguishes PBR from ‘pure practice’ is the act of making these processes explicit, and changing the nature of the knowledge gained from ‘subjective’ to ‘objective’.

According to Candy (2006): Searching for new understandings and seeking out new techniques is part of everyday practice. However, this kind of research is, for the most part, directed towards the individual’s particular goals of the time, rather than seeking to add to our shared store of knowledge.

Furthermore, the 2004 brochure for the doctoral programme in the creative and performing arts organised by the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, Belgium, states (Tomassi 2007:2):

Artists may create or re-create artworks using a researching mind. But the PhD in the creative and performing arts is based on research that is deeper or broader in scope. Candidates must already be able to create or perform at a high international level. Their artistic work has raised questions or problems that can be further articulated and analysed only through research. Hence, by posing and resolving such issues, the artists also alter their creative or performing processes.

These texts highlight the fact that discursively articulated research outcomes are essential to PBR. This distinguishes it from practice not purely in terms of processes, but specifically in terms of outcomes.

Candy’s definition of PBR quoted above is articulated from the perspective of the art and design discipline, and leaves some specifically music-related issues unanswered. The transient nature of musical performance means that ‘outcomes’ in the case of performances are demonstrably different from outcomes generated by artworks or designs. This complicates the ways in which knowledge ‘may be demonstrated through creative outcomes’. This core issue of PBR in music can be addressed by individual practitioner researchers in their individual research projects. Much interesting work has already been produced that suggest ways of dealing with this issue, and it is potentially in this area where some of the most innovative work in PBR will be done in future.

A description of ‘arts research’ that applies specifically to music is given by Borgdorff, who differentiates between research on the arts, research for the arts and research through art (own italics). In this three-part model, the first case (described as the interpretative perspective) denotes research that has art as its object, and is common to disciplines such as musicology, social sciences, art history, media studies and theatre studies (Borgdorff 2007:5). The second indicates art as the objective rather than the object: it implies research that provides insight into concrete practices (an example could be an investigation into extended techniques through the practical engagement with such techniques), and is described as the ‘instrumental perspective’ (ibid.). The last possibility, which Borgdorff calls the ‘immanent perspective’, characterizes practice as the essential component of both the research process and its result; the assumed separation of subject and object is challenged through this approach, which is meant to articulate a form of embodied knowledge (ibid.). The immanent perspective is available exclusively to the practitioner, a fact which is seen by Cobussen (Cobussen 2007:29) to be problematic in terms of research outcomes: unless this perspective is translated into a discursive medium which is accessible to a wider intellectual community, it cannot be said to add to the knowledge store.

Cobussen, drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger and Suzanne Cusick, argues for ‘embodied knowledge’ or immanent knowledge as intrinsic to the epistemology of PBR (Cobussen 2007:28):

… emphasizing that music-making is first of all a physical activity and that the mere physicality of that activity can teach us something (new) about the music in question, Cusick opens the door to a musical phenomenology and, consequently, for research activities based on the corporeal contribution of the musician, until now almost absent in academic musical practices.

The research activities, based on the ‘corporeal contribution of the musician’, must be assimilated into a discursive medium in order to make them accessible to a wider intellectual community and open to peer review. Schippers quotes examples of PBR doctorates that have used innovative and unprecedented methods of presentation to convey the ‘essence of the artistic process’ (Schippers 2007:36). As PBR develops, increasingly more individual research projects will serve as examples for how the embodied knowledge in practical work can be identified, interrogated, assimilated and presented in doctoral dissertations or theses.

I would like now to present some information on the implications of PBR in terms of education politics, both internationally and in South Africa. During the last two decades, tertiary institutions worldwide have come under pressure to adapt to the ‘rapidly changing social, technological, economic and political forces emanating from the immediate as well as from the broader postindustrial external environment’ (Bartell 2003:43). One result of this transformative process is a general move to integrate practice-oriented and research-oriented institutions. Individual institutions have begun to branch out in terms of their specializations, with conservatoires  in Europe that formerly presented mostly performance diplomas now offering research-oriented master’s and doctoral degrees, and Anglo-Saxon universities, formerly facilitating only purely academic degrees, opening the door to practice-based research projects.

In Australia, where all universities and conservatoires have amalgamated over the last twenty years (Schippers 2007:34), the integration of practice and research is by now well-established: in 2004, 79% of universities were engaged in PBR projects (ibid.), and the Queensland Conservatorium awarded their first practice-based doctoral degrees in 2009. South African universities have undergone similar changes since 1994: the amalgamation of universities and ‘technikons’ (technical or practice-oriented institutions) was articulated as part of the higher education policy in 2002 (Harris 2004:73).

PBR situates practice within research. These two concepts (‘practice’ and ‘research’) traditionally existed in different ontological and epistemological realms. The researcher and the musical artist have in the past occupied two separate roles in the music discipline; what PBR envisages is that one person could fulfill both roles, facilitating a critical exchange between practice and theory, and integrating these two seemingly disparate positions of performer and researcher within the academy. Several groups from different continents and contexts are currently engaged with issues related to PBR, and specifically PBR in doctoral degrees. The work done by the Polifonia Working Group in Europe will be mentioned here; because of time constraints, the important work done at Queensland Conservatorium, Australia, while also significant, will not be discussed.

The ‘Polifonia Third Cycle Working Group’ was created to examine professional music training specifically in Third Cycle^[1] studies, and to study issues related to the Bologna Declaration Process.^[2] According to the group (Polifonia 2007:9):

… conservatoires traditionally offer vocational training that leads to a career as a professional musician, composer, or in some cases also as a music teacher … Offering Third Cycle or doctoral studies has historically been the preserve of universities … It would seem logical to be able to research and communicate about music in all circumstances and from all aspects within the institution that deals most specifically with it and by those people who are executants, rather than confining this activity to those institutions that happen to offer musicology as a scientific study field. For this reason amongst others, professional music training institutions have started to offer doctoral studies of different kinds as well.

The working group highlights several problematic issues with regard to PBR, of which one is the lack of precedents for this type of research (Polifonia 2007:12):

These newer research areas do not yet enjoy the support of a well-established framework and their practitioners may work in isolation, in the absence of a network of other researchers, conferences, publications, etc. and no substantial body of previous research may yet exist.

The extent to which PBR could potentially probe beyond the bounds of traditional musicology will become apparent through each individual research project, but the Polifonia working group makes the point that ‘the Artistic Researcher will probably set his or her own kind and level of perception as the ultimate object of investigation as well as the standard for describing and assessing musical phenomena’ (Polifonia 2007:15). This view resonates with the ‘immanent perspective’ articulated by Borgdorff (Borgdorff 2007:5). The idea of immanent perception as primary source, and the development of a personal method of research presentation, are the areas where PBR departs most significantly from traditional types of research. As to the research process, the working group suggests that after the initial phase of identifying a topic, formulating a hypothesis, conducting an adequate literature review and investigating the research question, the process ‘is concluded with the production of documentation that reports the results in an accessible manner and which is available to interested parties, thereby allowing other researchers working in the same field to assess the results and build on them’ (Polifonia 2007:14).

The issue of assessment and examination is specifically addressed by the Polifonia working group. The group departs from the assumption that third cycle studies form part of a coherent educational system comprising of first and second cycle studies, the outcomes of which should adequately prepare a student for the requirements of the research-focused third cycle study. This implies that assessment of practical capability and all issues relating to practical musicianship should be located in the first and second cycle studies, and the participant in a third cycle study should not be judged on a practical level alone (although the working group does suggest that a practical audition combined with a viva voce could form part of the initial application procedure). Rather, the integrated nature of a practice-based research third cycle degree means that the practical work done must be judged within the context of the research outcomes generated by the work.

The South African context presents both similarities and departures from the European situation. According to the Education White Paper of 1997, South African universities must be structured to focus on research, education, and outreach. Performance or purely practical work has no clear position within the university structure. Universities in South Africa are subsidized by the NRF and the Department of National Education (through the SAPSE system), based on the research output of staff members. This system does not recognize creative or performance outputs as the equivalent of research output (for example formal articles or books), which means that practical staff members that are not engaged in research projects generate little or no subsidy from the government for their respective departments. In lieu of this, some individual institutions have created their own ‘reward’ systems for creative and practical output (i.e. composition and performance). The University of Stellenbosch, for example, works on a ‘point’ system according to which practical staff members are compensated financially for practical work done in their respective fields. Similar systems exist at the University of the Free State, Rhodes University, the University of Kwazulu Natal and the University of the Witwatersrand.^[3] What this suggests is that many institutions acknowledge ‘equivalence’ in the amount and quality of work done by performers in relation to researchers; this, however, has no bearing on the nature of the output. One could argue that this type of institutional compensation is, in fact, compounding the problem of institutional division between academic and research staff, rather than addressing it in a productive way.

In this context of education politics, PBR can play a significant role, for it facilitates a type of research that is contingent on practical engagement, but produces peer-reviewable research products as a result.

In general, until 2010 South African tertiary music institutions presented professional degrees^[4] where traditional research and performance were viewed as separate examinable endeavors, or doctorates that required research output of a scholarly nature. Michael Biggs of the University of Hertfordshire, England, gives the following description of the different types of doctoral or third cycle degrees (Biggs 2000):

We should perhaps begin with a careful description of the degrees to which we are referring. Doctoral degrees are of two main types: the PhD, and awards bearing titles such as DMus, EdD, DDes, etc. The former are exclusively research degrees, in which the student may undertake a programme of research training but is mainly working independently on a research project with a supervisor. The latter are taught or professional degrees, in which the student will be taught for at least one-third of the programme (Harris Report, annex G). In parallel with this distinction, but frequently confused with professional degrees, are practice-based projects or submissions.

This definition, although formulated by a British scholar, also applies to the South African educational system. Biggs’s first definition can be applied to the PhD or DPhil offered by many university music departments. The DMus degree as presented at, for example, the University of Pretoria, fits none of these definitions: no part of the degree is officially ‘taught’, practical lessons are determined individually between student and practical teacher and there is no form of research training involved. Currently, no South African University offers either a ‘professional degree’ as Biggs defines it or a taught degree in music at the doctoral level. The typical Doctor of Musical Arts degree offered at many American universities consists of a large amount of coursework in addition to practical lessons and examinations. No South African university is offering a doctoral degree on that scale at the present time. A doctoral programme based on PBR falls under Biggs’s first type, the PhD, and must therefore not be confused with ‘professional’ degrees.

By 2012, the first students in the integrated PhD programme at Stellenbosch University will complete their studies. The results of these degree processes will hopefully encourage further developments in the application of PBR at South African universities, for it will set a precedent for doctoral degrees that utilise performance as the primary source of new knowledge. PBR in music departments in South Africa hold the prospect of addressing the critically high cost of maintaining such departments through the generation of subsidies for recognized doctoral research and intellectual outputs. But more importantly, an intellectual and artistic engagement with PBR by South African performers and scholars presents much potential for renewal and innovation in a discipline that has been isolated for too long from full academic participation at our universities.

There are several ways in which to examine the topic of practice-based research (PBR), as we are witnessing during this symposium.  The angle that I propose to follow when I entitle my contribution “a conceptual approach” is the deductive one:  simply to see where it leads me when I consider the topic at hand deductively.  Because:  when one understands what PBR is/can be/should be, what possibilities it opens up, then one can begin to think about how a PhD that includes creative work can be positioned onto it.  The three words in question, of course, are practice, research and music.  The “triangular” constellation of these three words constitutes the concept PBR in music.

I shall proceed to analyse each of these words briefly before I attempt a synthesis of their meaning as a constellation.  I shall do so in reverse order: research, music, practice.

Research

I am stating the obvious when I say that research can mean different things to different people.  For example, research can be what I do when I read up on information for my undergraduate essay on Mozart’s piano concertos.  Or it could be what I do when I collect background information for my performance of a work by Bach for solo cello.  Within the context of a PhD, however, that is not what research entails.  Research in the context of a PhD is defined in the following two quotes as:

DHET definition of research output:

“textual output where research is understood as original, systematic investigation undertaken in order to gain new knowledge and understanding. Peer evaluation of research is a fundamental prerequisite of all recognised research output and is the mechanism of ensuring and thus enhancing quality” (my highlighting)

Michael Biggs, from the field of visual arts,University of Hertfordshire,UK, quotes a definition from a UKGGE (UK Council for Graduate Education) study on doctoral research when he says:

“The UKCGE paper went on to identify broad consensus in theUKabout certain qualities that a doctorate would demonstrate:

an original contribution to knowledge and/or understanding and would include the demonstration of certain competencies:

undertake a systematic enquiry
apply methods appropriate to the subject
a grasp of context
documentation and communication in a permanent form
sustained and contextualised logical argument
justification of actions in relation to process and product
valid and original work of high quality”

All of these criteria can be applied to music.  It is significant that in both definitions the word “understanding” is added to the word “knowledge”, and, in the case of Biggs it is even seen in “and/or” terms.  It seems to me that in PBR the critical mass of the work would lean over to the side of understanding, rather than to the side of knowledge.

Music

The general debate about PBR traverses all the art forms.  While this is to be welcomed, there is a danger that important differences between the various arts are overlooked.  The next stage of my argument, therefore, examines which characteristics of music have to be taken into account when viewing it within the triangular constellation mentioned above.

One of the most intriguing questions in all musicology is the one about the meaning of music.  Whatever else can be said about the matter, it has to be understood that musical signs are non-referential.  This means that music cannot convey meaning in the same way as a painting or poetry can. I should like to phrase it like this:  music cannot convey knowledge, but it is a way of knowing.   This also implies that the meaning contained within music cannot be translated into another language, even if one regards music as a “knowledge system” in its own right.  One cannot articulate the content of music in words.   Neither can it be reduced to another set of criteria, be they social, psychological or physiological.  Even though musicology has developed an extremely sophisticated terminology with which to describe music in its most intricate detail and even though an extensive discourse about how music is embedded in a social context has developed, such description can never replace the actual sound, the actual experience of music. To put it in another way: description cannot replace actual enactment of music.  For music to exist it has to sound, it has to be performed.  (In my opinion the term “integrated PhD” has the real danger of blurring the distinctness between description and enactment, between verbal and musical language, as if translation is possible and should be attempted.  If that is what is meant by integration, then it is a misnomer.  For that reason “coherence” might be a better term.)  Allow me to explain this by means of three examples:

Mary’s room is a thought experiment that is quite instructive in our debate, even if I am using it slightly out of context.  It goes like this:

In philosophy of mind, Mary’s Room is a thought experiment meant to demonstrate the non-physical nature of mental states. It is an example meant to highlight the knowledge argument against physicalism. The example first appears in an article by Frank Jackson, entitled “Epiphenomenal Qualia”[1], which appears in Philosophical Quarterly 32:127 (1982).

The thought experiment is as follows: Mary lives her entire life in a room devoid of colour—she has never directly experienced colour in her entire life, though she is capable of it. Through black-and-white books and other media, she is educated on neuroscience to the point where she becomes an expert on the subject. Mary learns everything there is to know about the perception of colour in the brain, as well as the physical facts about how light works in order to create the different colour wavelengths. It can be said that Mary is aware of all physical facts about colour and colour perception.

After Mary’s studies on colour perception in the brain are complete, she exits the room and experiences, for the very first time, direct colour perception. She sees the colour red for the very first time, and learns something new about it — namely, what red looks like.[2]

It is obvious that the colour red in this experiment could be replaced by the taste of wine or the sound of a particular piece of music or by music in general.

My second example comes with an acknowledgement to Nina Schumann and Luis Magalhaes and goes back to an experience I had during their last concert.  All of us know about Bach’s Goldberg Variations.  In this age of HIPP we probably all have an idea of how we would like to have this music performed.  Now imagine the work being performed not on one piano, but on two modern concert grands in an arrangement by none other than that late Romantic (and I must add: Bavarian!) composer Joseph Rheinberger!  Enough to make the hair in your neck rise? Surely, this time Nina and Luis had got it all wrong:  that was the state of mind in which I went to the concert, armed with all the dogmas and theoretical knowledge at my disposal.  Theoretically speaking, such a piano arrangement could never be convincing, but in practice it turned out to be one of the most moving performances I have experienced in recent months, not only because the arrangement is superb, but even more so because the two pianists played masterfully, interacting in a way that the original version for two manuals on a harpsichord could never have envisaged.

Instead of arguing at length about the matter, analysing all its various aspects, they simply showed that it could be done.  As in the example of Mary’s Room the music (whether it is composed, arranged or performed) makes for a distinct experience that cannot be reduced to description or translated into words.  It is on this quality of music that practice-based research has to rest. And I would argue that the appropriate response to “showing” is “understanding”, the second key criterion of research as set out above.

My third example:  In my work on the composer Hugo Distler I came across a very interesting statement.  In connection with the agonizing search for an apt way to express the religious ideas based on the dialectic theology of Karl Barth during the 1920s and 1930s, a great deal of debate was going on in Germany about which stylistic devices were suitable and which were not, in order to overcome the stale, sentimental and overloaded religious style of late Romanticism, including that of Rheinberger (!).  Many unsuccessful attempts were made by many a small master until the debate came to an abrupt end when one or two composers of genius came along and simply did it, did it intuitively, simply showing how it could be done.  With hindsight their solutions seem so right that one wonders why no one else had come up with something similar before (as is proved by numerous imitators and epigones afterwards).  This example can be extended toSouth Africa at the present time:  many people are arguing about a way to make our music sound “ofAfrica” or to reflect our cultural diversity in some way.  Composition competitions or commissions have even tried /try to “command” or prescribe to composers to write such music.  We should all relax and wait for a composer of genius to come and simply show us how to achieve this aim.  That is how all great styles, all great music comes about.

I could go on about this for a long time referring to Kant’s distinction between science and art, to the devil’s pact in Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus, to statements the composer Roelof Temmingh has made to me about what composing really is, about improvisation, or a wonderful example about a project about deconstructing the concept of motherhood undertaken by one of our colleagues in the Visual Arts department across the road, but for the time being I will leave it at that, and provide these examples during discussion time, if it is opportune to do so.

The point in all of this is that the musical component in practice-based research cannot be relegated to the position of exemplification of arguments that are fundamentally musicological in nature.  The quality of a musicological thesis (for example on the music of this or that composer or on this or that culture) depends on the convincing structure of its argumentation, albeit underpinned by representative illustrations “from the field”, but not on the inherent quality of the musical examples.  Conversely, the musical component of practice-based research has to present (show!) a coherent and “sustained” argument in its own right, which is then reflected upon in the written component.  One may even wonder whether the term PBR does not contain some kind of hierarchy, where the musical practice has supremacy.

Practice

What is the difference between the theorem on rectangular triangles of Pythagoras and Mozart’s symphony no. 40 in g minor?  Once I have understood Pythagoras’ theorem and can demonstrate that I am able to produce the proof of its correctness, I can store it in my memory and move on to another (mathematical) problem.  Mozart’s symphony, on the other hand, which, incidentally, I came to know more or less at the same time as the Pythagorean theorem, has been a constant companion throughout my life ever since, a piece of music that I revisit every now and again on a Sunday afternoon.  Even though I hold Pythagoras in as high a regard as Mozart (and that is why I have adopted a deductive approach in this talk), I do not revisit his theorem on Sunday afternoons.

What does this tell us?  In my opinion it demonstrates the difference between knowledge in the academic sense, and practice.  They are different modes of thinking, different modes of knowing, they are different in kind, not interchangeable, not translatable, even if I have understood both of them equally well.  To use Greek terminology:  it is the difference between diegesis and mimesis.[3]  That is why I believe – at least in respect of music – that it is wrong to say that art is a form of research.  Rather, one should emphasize that the researcher and the performer represent two different states of being.  For lack of better words, I would say that the artist has to be in a state of inspiration, of intuition, in extreme cases perhaps even in a state of trance when creating or recreating music.  When that happens we have the magic of a good musical work or a good performance.  And that is why it matters that this is taken into account in a doctoral project, why this has to be examined.  (For that reason, also, I think it is wrong to talk of creative work in music as being a “professional” activity or to talk about the DMus or DMA as “professional degrees”.)

Furthermore, it goes without saying that if such creative work is to be commensurate with the requirements of a PhD and is to be a meaningful and substantial contribution to new and original understanding, it has to be of the highest order.  [Not for the talk but for the discussion:  but I wonder if setting a time frame for such creative work is not more easily justifiable than setting a page length for the written work, because musical expression does take place in time, while the flash of logic in a thesis can be much more instantaneous, and why it is not so absurd to set a time frame in the case of music, because music is time]

Synthesis

Traditionally, research-based knowledge and artistic expression have occupied different spheres, spheres that have been regarded as mutually exclusive.  The one has its home in the research article, book or doctoral thesis, the other in the concert hall, church or place of entertainment.  But, on closer examination, that does not mean that they are hermetically sealed, or closed on each other.  Rather, they can also be regarded as complementary, at the interface of each other (to use modern jargon), and can be brought into mutual orbit.  That is exactly where the new and exciting possibilities open up in the filed of practice-based research.  The difficult question is how to set up this interface.  If it means that the traditional two spheres are dissolved, “lifted up” into a synthesis in the Hegelian sense of the word, then “integration” will have destroyed rather than stimulated the tension that is inherent between the two.  That is why I like the astronomical term orbit:  the sun and the earth are different in kind, but nevertheless they are in a position of mutual tension, governed by the force of gravity.  If that force disappears they would collapse into each other and lose what makes them distinct.  (And that is exactly why I used the astronomical term constellation for my characterisation of practice-based research at the beginning of my talk.)   To remain with the analogy:  PBR cannot be about examining the sun and the earth each in their own right, but rather to examine the force between them that makes them a system, a solar system and the characteristics/features that are a result of the influence of the orbit.  Other models that come to mind would be that of setting up a dialogue between the two spheres or to understand them in an inter-textual relationship.  Coherence?

In conclusion:  That is why the creative work in the doctoral project has to be different from that of taking part in a competition, even if it is a competition against one’s self and one’s destiny (like the Indian cricket player), while at the same time the creative work may not be diluted into mere exemplification of an essentially musicological argument.

‘The fate of the disciplines’ is an issue of Critical Enquiry that explores a central issue voiced by James Chandler in his introduction, namely that the structure of the university was solidified in a specific time and place and that, given the opportunity, one would design a different university system today.  This debate focuses around the issues of disciplinarity versus interdisciplinarity, with contributions in this volume standing on both sides of the divide.

Chandler first of all defines a discipline as a concept that is distinguished not only on the basis of a set of established methodologies, but also as something that carries connotations of identity, before chronicling the advent of interdisciplinarity in the academe and introducing some of the debates that have centered around it.   Opening this volume are two essays by Robert Post and Judith Butler, concerned not only with defining the concept of a ‘discipline’, but also centering on the possible loss of academic freedom through the proliferation of interdisciplinary studies.

Following Post and Butler’s articles, there are eight essays debating disciplinary practice and change from the ‘disciplines’ of science studies, cinema studies, theology, philology and visual arts.  Lorraine Daston reflects on the gradual drift between the recent disciplines, history of science and science studies, noting that a discipline is reified on the basis of its use of an established set of methodologies.  Mario Biagioli actively calls for interdisciplinary partnerships between the humanities and science in order to ‘redeem’ the former, his view on interdisciplinarity projects being that they problem-orientated research clusters that are frequently too short-lived to merit institutionalization.

The two essays regarding theology, by Saba Mahmood and Amy Hollywood, illustrate through repeated claims of contemporary relevance the difficulties faced by a waning discipline that was once considered the pinnacle of the university.  Likewise, the essays on philology and the classics, respectively by Sheldon Pollock and François Hartog reflect anxiety about the future of their disciplines in the wake of capitalist concerns and modernity.  This anxiety lies so deep that both Pollock and Hartog deny and lament the current disciplinarity of their disciplines, with Pollock stating that ‘we have failed spectacularly to conceptualize our own disciplinarity’ (p. 947), and Hartog that fragmentation has rendered the Classics ‘well outside disciplinary boundaries’ (p. 966).

The two articles by Dudley Andrew and Gertrud Koch are concerned with one of the newest disciplines, film studies.  Dudly shows that there was some resistance from the critical public to have the study of film enter the institution and become disciplined.  In contrast to many of the contributors to this volume who regard formalized or uniform methodology as a prerequisite for the constitution of a discipline, he takes a subject-orientated approach that regards film itself as a disciplining factor.  The articles on the arts by W. J. T. Mitchell and Bill Brown focus on the question of whether it is possible or even desirable to discipline creative arts.  Brown in particular deals with the notion of artworks as measurable research output within an academic institution.  The final two articles in ‘The fate of the Disciplines’ once again deal with the broader issues surrounding interdisciplinarity.  David Wellbery attempts to use systems theory to explain disciplinary formation and interaction, while Marshall Sahlins is concerned with the influence of capitalist aspirations on the organization of the university.

Throughout the pages of this volume, contributors reflect on the causes for interdisciplinary research projects and their effect on existing disciplines and university structures.  Several contributors lament the proliferation of interdisciplinarity centers and institutions that have arisen to breach the challenges posed by traditional research environments, most notably Sahlins who comments that ‘all that clutters is not gold’ (p. 1017).  Besides channeling funding away from established disciplines, the institutionalization of interdisciplinary projects is seen by some to present a threat to academic freedom.  Post argues that the upholding of academic norms within disciplines ensures the production of expert knowledge that can lay claim to academic autonomy from external forces.  However, Butler shows this to be a difficult situation, arguing that, without critical enquiry (which often is forced to assume a rogue position in relation to existing thought) these selfsame norms become redundant and detrimental to true academic freedom.

Wellbery’s essay attempts to explain disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity with reference to Niklas Luhmann’s application of systems theory.   He regards disciplines as organic systems capable of reproducing themselves and, in contrast to regarding a discipline as founded on either methodology or subject, locates ‘the unity of the discipline’ in the ‘recursive connectivity of its operations as a self-reproducing social system’ (p. 993).  From this perspective, disciplines determine their course by continually evaluating the relevance or irrelevance of available discourses, following circular paths that are unhindered by static boundaries.  Far from a laissez fair approach, Wellbery distinguishes between different types of systems coupling as conceptualized by Luhmann, ranging from ‘occasional interdisciplinarity’ to ‘problem-oriented interdisciplinarity’ and ‘transdisciplinarity’ (pp. 988-9). Informed by cybernetics and Foucault’s discourse on interdisciplinarity, Wellbery moreover emphasizes that constraint, as embodied in disciplinary distinctions, becomes a prerequisite for communication in complex systems.

‘The fate of the disciplines’ contains contributions from scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, all brought together to share their thoughts on disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity.   Seeing as this in itself constitutes an interdisciplinary endeavor, I set out to discover if the study of interdisciplinarity had spawned any institutes as yet.  This lead me to the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity housed at the University of North Texas, who pride themselves on being the first center focused on the issue of interdisciplinarity itself.  According to their website (www.csid.unt.edu), this center is committed to providing resources to scholars engaged in interdisciplinary studies, promoting experiments across disciplines, recognizing institutional barriers to interdisciplinarity, establishing indicators capable of measuring the success or failure of interdisciplinary projects and ‘developing a set of best practices for interdisciplinarity’.  Concerning their focused topic and the desire to develop methodology, one is forced to conclude that this center is concerned with disciplining interdisciplinary studies.

The contributions in ‘The fate of the disciplines’ have shown that the relationship between disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity is a contentious one, a problem around which scholars from different disciplines have gathered. Ironically, this seems to be leading to the formation of a new discipline, and one wonders whether its institutionalization is merited, considering, as shown by Wellbery, the often-transitory nature of transdisciplinary projects.  Disciplines are plastic and subject to evolution, but as argued by Hunt in Chandler, interdisciplinarity ‘depends on the certainty of disciplinary boundaries’ (p. 741).  The one cannot exist without the other.

Wellbery’s hypothesis of systemic contact makes it possible to engage with various discourses that we deem relevant to our own subject matter and interests, yet conscious of the temporary boundaries of our malleable academic communities or disciplines.   As to Post’s concern regarding the detrimental effect of interdisciplinarity on the production of expert knowledge and subsequent academic autonomy, I would like to argue that the purpose of undergraduate and graduate programs is not first and foremost the mastery of a set of ideas or methods, but rather the cultivation of a critical mind that knows how to apply itself to concepts and problems.  The judicious engagement with borrowed theory may, considering that complex systems interact with their environment on a non-linear basis, result in unexpected and fruitful results and not in a watering-down of expertise.

This interaction should be seen as no more threatening than the movement of solvent molecules through the thin membrane of a biological cell.   Such a membrane is selectively permeable, just as a discipline has agency in choosing which of the available discourses to interact with.   Moreover, osmosis and diffusion are necessary to ensure the vitality of a cell and to enable the cellular walls to regulate its internal pressure.  As Wellbery has shown, far from merely negative forces, control and restriction should be seen as prerequisites to effective communication.  Perhaps this could provide a model for interdisciplinary scholars lamenting disciplinary boundaries, just as it should remind those opposed to interdisciplinary projects that preventing movement through their walls only starves the discipline from within.

The Afrikaans folk song is already for more than 30 years Dr Burden’s field of research. Interesting aspects such as  the unpretentiousness and  playfulness with words, as well as humor and crudeness are aspects being investigated.

Seeing that many visitors to the Word Fest had to choose between various interesting presentations, they now have the opportunity to catch up to enjoy this lecture.

For more information contact dr Burden at  021-808 2002.

LESING OOR VOLKSLIEDJIES

Die gewilde lesing oor volksliedjies wat by Woordfees 2011 aangebied is, word op openbare versoek Woensdagaand 25 Mei om 18:30 herhaal in die Universiteitsmuseum, Ryneveldstraat 52, Stellenbosch.

Die aanbieder is dr Matilda Burden, wat reeds vir meer as 30 jaar besig is met navorsing oor die Afrikaanse volksliedjie. Interessante aspekte word ondersoek, soos die pretensieloosheid en woordvaardigheid van die volksmens soos dit na vore kom in Afrikaanse volksliedjies, asook die humor en kruheid wat daaruit spreek. Daar word ook gekyk na die funksie en die vorm van die volksliedjie – het die liriek van die volkslied ook ‘n bepaalde vorm soos formele poësie?

Baie feesgangers by Woordfees het die lesing misgeloop weens botsings met ander interessante aanbiedinge. Hier is ‘n geleentheid om die gaping te vul. Die lesing bied ‘n verryking vir elkeen wat die ongelooflike potensiaal en sêkrag van Afrikaans kan geniet en waardeer.

Vir verdere inligting kontak dr Burden by  021-808 2002.

Pierrot Lunaire, composed in 1912, is one of the best examples of Schoenberg’s ‘atonal’ style, where the composer first experimented with what he termed ‘the emancipation of dissonance’. All traditional concepts of harmonic tension and release are discarded, all accepted ‘rules’ of tonality are broken, and the result is a listening experience that has a powerful emotional and intellectual impact. Pierrot Lunaire is often credited as being one of the most significant and revolutionary works of the 20th century, and few compositions that followed it could remain free from its influence.

The texts for Pierrot Lunaire are originally by Albert Giraud, translated into German by Otto Erich Hartleben. The ‘Pierrot’ from the title is taken from the traditional commedia dell’arte – he is the sad clown, pining for the love of Colombine, his unfaithful wife, who often breaks his heart. In the course of the 21  poems, we meet several fantastical figures: Pierrot and Colombine, the ‘sick, pale moon’, Cassander, the Madonna, the Pale Washerwoman and others. Pierrot steers his boat across the ocean with the moonbeam as rudder, he tries to get rid of the ‘moonspot’ on his shoulder, he does his make-up like a dandy, he bores a hole in Cassander’s head to ash his cigar in, he finally makes his way home to Bergamo.

This is the last work of Schoenberg’s expressionist period : expressionism is generally defined as an art movement in which representation of nature is subordinated to expression of emotion, where artists aimed for as direct an expression of emotion as possible, using non-representational images to project these emotions directly, rather than looking towards the ‘outside world’ for inspiration.

The expressionist setting of the poems is inspired by the morbid and often macabre aspects of expressionist painting, and is combined with echoes of the satirical and often biting German cabaret,  with which Schoenberg was intimately familiar. Through these influences he brings the poems vividly to life. Schoenberg’s use of ‘sprechstimme’ is one of the most original features of the work: the vocal technique is a combination of singing and speech, with pitch approached with a level of freedom unprecedented in western vocal literature at the time. The part will be played by Vanessa Tait-Jones. The rest of the ensemble comprises piano (Mareli Stolp), violin (Tricia Theunissen), viola (Jan-Hendrik Harley), cello (Joachim Müller-Crepon), clarinet (doubling on bass clarinet) (Becky Stelzner) and flute (doubling on piccolo) (Liesl Stolz).

Tickets: R99 /R75 at Computicket or on 083 915 8000.
Box office at the Endler Hall will open at 19:00 on the night.
For further enquiries, please call the Endler Hall Concert Series on 021 808 2343 during office hours.

(Mareli Stolp)

Please note this replaces the scheduled Colloquium featuring Avril Kinsey which will now take place in the 2nd semester.

For further information please contact Louise Howlett at 021 808 2358 or howlett@sun.ac.za

‘n Huldeblyk aan Hubert du Plessis word op Maandag 28 Maart, 16:00 – 17:30 in die Fismersaal, Konservatorium deur die Departement Musiek aangebied.  Dr. du Plessis was vanaf 1958 tot met sy aftrede in 1982 as dosent aan die Departement verbonde.  Proff. Hans Roosenschoon en Izak Grové sal ‘n waardering van die lewe en werk van een van Suid-Afrika se vooraanstaande komponiste lewer, terwyl ander personeellede en studente van sy musiek sal uitvoer.

Let wel dat hierdie geleentheid die geskeduleerde Colloquium met Avril Kinsey sal vervang.  Sy sal dan in die tweede semester optree.

Vir verdere inligting skakel Louise Howlett by 021 808 2358 of howlett@sun.ac.za

Ignore the context: analyse the notes.
The social background’s secondary here…
So don’t say it if it’s not on the page!
And please don’t speculate on history
Or run the risk to o’er-philosophise,
To lose the notes in verbiage that distracts
From the romantic genius of that muse.

You write descriptions that are colourful
That capture music: freeze sounds on a page.
Your evocations feel the grain and sing
The groove. That is unusual in your field.
No soporific dull descriptions here.
The music breathes. It climbs and falls. It sings.
So your analysis is a response,
An echo or a mirror that reflects
The light and mirrors what it sees.

But please:
When I should drown I would that you weren’t there
To editorialize, adapt, describe.
To capture on the page my noble fight
For breath, my desperate screams: my cries for help.
You would describe the water with great skill.
But would you wade in, risk to lend a hand?
Or rather stand on shore and write it down?
Your positivism would not allow
Another context to participate.
My death you would describe in accurate
Felicity. Immortalize me thus
As Shakespeare did poor mad Ophelia.

When I should drown I would that you weren’t there.
I’d want another breed of analyst
With social conscience to philologize
Contextually. To not describe but play
An active part in framing my discourse
With empathy and insight and with love.

“I’m drowning here and you’re describing the water” – As Good as it Gets

(Etienne Viviers)

The film festival is taking place from 7-11 March in Stellenbosch and Kayamandi (5 Ryneveld Restaurant, Ryneveld Street, Stellenbosch and AmaZink Eatery, Kayamandi).

As a writer, visual artists and filmmaker, Aryan Kaganof will also be discussing his work with Christo Doherty (head of the Wits Arts School) in terms of “Medium Specificity”, exploring how content is influenced and potentially altered by different mediums. This conversation will take place on 7 March at 14:00 in the Boektent, Stellenbosch.

Programme

For bookings call Computicket at 021-809 7473.
For more information call Lizabé Lambrechts at 072-372 4140.

SASRIM
FIFTH ANNUAL CONGRESS
Rhodes University, Grahamstown
23–25 June 2011

SASRIM was founded in order to draw together persons researching all fields of music, a move that was intended to stimulate discussions across previously segregated sub-disciplines and to result in synergistic benefits to our research and even to the way in which we conceptualise our research. With this aim in mind, it has been decided that, in contrast to its previous congresses and the 2010 IMS-SASRIM Conference, SASRIM is not specifying a theme for its 2011 congress. As in the past we are inviting lecture demonstrations and round-table discussions as well as individual papers. While some presentations may be limited to subject matter within a single field of musical practice (e.g. a topic in the field of music education or music librarianship, discussion of a single body of African or South African music, or a topic with the field of music theory, aesthetics, or cultural theory) or to a single scholarly perspective, others may cross the boundaries that have become traditional. Presentations will be chosen solely on their quality, not on their subject matter or approach. They may be conducted in any of the official South African languages.

Papers should be limited to 20 minutes (with an additional 10 minutes allowed for discussion).

Lecture demonstrations and round-table discussions should be limited to 45 minutes (with an additional 15 minutes allowed for discussion).

Submission requirements: Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words as well as a short CV and a list of the equipment you will need. If your paper is not in English, please also submit an abstract in English. If you are planning a round-table discussion, we need to know who the participants will be (along with a brief description of each participant), as well as an explanation of your plan for the discussion. Please send your proposals for papers and other presentations at the Fifth Annual Conference of the South African Society for Research in Music to: sasrim@gmail.com by 28 February 2011.

Dates: The dates of the 2011 Congress have been chosen so as to allow participants to stay in Grahamstown for the IASPM conference (27 June–1 July) and the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown. Due to the earlier-than-usual date of the Congress, we do not plan to extend the date by which proposals must be submitted.