Powers of Divergence: An Experimental Approach to Music Performance

Beyond
resemblance: creative divergence in music performance

What does it mean to produce resemblance in the performance of written
music? Starting from how this question is commonly answered by the practice of
interpretation in Western notated art music, this book proposes a move beyond
commonly accepted codes, conventions and territories of music performance.
Appropriating reflections from post-structural philosophy, visual arts and
semiotics, and crucially based upon an artistic research project with a strong
creative and practical component, it proposes a new approach to music
performance. The approach is based on divergence, on the difference produced by
intensifying the chasm between the symbolic aspect of music notation and the
irreducible materiality of performance. Instead of regarding performance as
reiteration, reconstruction and reproduction of past musical works, Powers
of Divergence emphasises its potential for the emergence of the new and for
the problematisation of the limits of musical semiotics.

Ebook available in Open Access.
This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).