Doctoral Degrees (Music)

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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Music) by Subject "Artistic -- Research -- Music"

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    Artistic experimentation through decolonial sound projects for clarinet
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2021-04) Liebenberg, Visser; Muller, Stephanus; Pauw, Esther Marie; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Department of Music.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study explores the sounding capacity of the clarinet through decolonial projects. This study’s sound projects are infused by a decolonial imperative that invokes the conglomerate concept of modernity/(de)coloniality (Walter Mignolo, 2012: 90). Mignolo’s term, together with his notion of decolonial aestheSis operate as turbines from which to explore the sounding capacity of the clarinet, an instrument that is conventionally situated in a largely Western music practice. In my research, the clarinet, as well as the researcher, encounter endogenous sounds and thereby engage in processes of sound translation. The method of investigation used is that of artistic research and specifically artistic experimentation that relies on generating knowledge from practice and reflecting on the generated knowledges, as possible avenues for exploration. The avoidance of a potentially opportunistic use of a decolonial imperative for a sound translation process directs this study towards the researcher’s creation of an index of clarinet sounds. This index is codified as a list of newly improvised sounds and from this index a collaborative creation process for a new composition emerges. The new composition, created with the composer Pierre-Henri Wicomb, is composed, notated and performed by the researcher. Throughout this study, various decolonial encounters are staged ranging from interaction with musicians and dancers, discussions with colleague artistic researchers, as well as two research performance events, one in front of a small group of participants at the Percival Kirby Collection of Indigenous instruments, and the other in front of a much larger audience at the Stellenbosch University Museum. The experiments presented through this research delink the clarinet from Western performance practice and its discourses, so that novel avenues for exploring the sounding capacity of the clarinet, and the situatedness of the clarinet player, arise. Resulting knowledges and further questions from the various research processes crystallise into consideration of how a decolonial imperative confronts, questions, and enhances the sounding clarinet, together with how these processes morph with the identity of the clarinettist-researcher. The research finds that a decolonial imperative does indeed transform the sounding capacities of the clarinet, so that the clarinet practice of the researcher itself, as well as its contexts of influence, are shifted into forms of sonic migrancy. Aspects such as these are documented and clarified through self-reflexive writing in the dissertation. The research presented in the thesis is paired with film footage of sound experiments, as undertaken throughout the research.