international journal of preparing stylistically

International Journal ofMusic Education

2015, Vol. 33(1) 66 –79© The Author(s) 2014

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DOI: 10.1177/0255761414528435ijm.sagepub.com

Preparing stylistically challenging contemporary classical repertoire for performance: Interpreting Kumari

Liam VineyUniversity of Queensland, Australia

Diana BlomUniversity of Western Sydney, Australia

AbstractResearch involving the learning processes of musicians seldom examines specific pieces of music, and limited attention has been devoted to the earliest stages of learning a stylistically challenging or new piece of 20th-/21st-century art music. This article describes the processes by which two pianists (the authors) learned Ross Edwards’s Kumari, for solo piano. In doing so, it outlines five “elements” in a model for understanding or replicating that process. A key finding is the concept that some modern repertoire may require a preparation stage that occurs earlier than learning stages documented in the literature, one that establishes an “interpretation platform” for learning music in an unfamiliar style. This article offers a guide to pianists learning or teaching Kumari, other works by Edwards, and other stylistically challenging contemporary piano music. More broadly, it may serve as a model for any individual engaged with less familiar repertoire, and may, therefore, be of benefit to music educators working with students in challenging repertoire for solo instruments, ensembles or choirs.

Keywords20th-century piano music, Australian music, interpretation, interpretation platform, Kumari, practice-led research, stylistically challenging repertoire

Introduction

The two authors are both experienced pianists, who independently prepared Kumari (1980), a com-position for solo piano by Australian composer Ross Edwards, for unrelated high-profile public

Corresponding author:Liam Viney, University of Queensland, School of Music, Building 51, University of Queensland, St. Lucia 4072, Australia. Email: [email protected]

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performances.1 Both authors found the work stylistically unusual and conceptually challenging. Prior experience and education did not provide either pianist with a comprehensive basis for confi-dent interpretive decision-making in learning Kumari. This paper describes the practice-based pro-cesses by which the authors came to understand and interpret Kumari and in doing so, recognize an initial stage in the preparation of a new work, one not previously documented in the literature. The concept of an interpretation platform is presented here with the aim of serving an educational func-tion and is intended to be useful to music performance students, teachers, academics, and musicians who encounter contemporary classical repertoire.

This research draws on concepts and methods associated with “practice-led research” in music performance. In recent decades, music performance research has grown rapidly (for example, Cook, 2001; Guck, 2005; Rink, 1995). There are several terms for writing by performers and other arts practitioners about their performance preparation processes, including artistic research, dis-covery-led research, and practice-based or practice-led research. For dancer Sarah Rubidge (2005), when a researcher uses practice to research practice, often without an initial clearly defined ques-tion or hypothesis, (although a formally defined question or hypothesis may arise), this is practice-led research. Only the performer can undertake this type of research, by definition, and this understanding of arts practice as a site of knowledge is recognized by arts practitioners across a range of arts disciplines (Blom, Wright, & Bennett, 2008).

John Rink (2002) describes the experience documented in this article as a “performer’s analy-sis” (p. 36), a term that refers to what transpires when “an interpretation is being formulated and subsequently re-evaluated – that is, while one is practicing rather than performing” (p. 39). This article offers a distillation of those practice-led learning processes, a sequence of categories that may offer teachers, students, and performers of unfamiliar contemporary music a basis for approaching such works with more confidence. Given the extent to which performing musicians are often involved with teaching, the application of practice-led research to learning situations cre-ates a logical connection between the two domains. While the specifics of this article apply to a single piano composition, the model of an interpretation platform could be applied to other contexts.

Literature

Prominent research on how instrumentalists approach a work that is new to them seldom names the specific piece in question (Hallam, 1995, 2001), and therefore describes a generalized process that best applies to familiar or traditional repertoire in which a basic interpretive framework can be assumed. Hallam (1995) suggested that the first stage is one of playing through the piece to gain an overview of structure and sound. Gaining an overview by playing through the work as a first step is similar to Chaffin and Imreh’s (2002) notion of “Scouting it Out.” Chaffin and Imreh (2002, pp. 240–246) described six stages in learning a familiar work, the Presto from Bach’s Italian Concerto:

1. Scouting it Out

2. Section by Section

3. The Grey Stage

4. Putting it Together

5. Polishing

6. Maintenance



68 International Journal of Music Education 33(1)

In other literature, musicians writing about their approach to works from the 18th (Guck, 2005) and 19th (Rink, 1995) centuries found that issues of time became the major focus, specifically rhythm, meter and tempo.

Clarke, Cook, Harrison and Thomas (2005) gave the analytical viewpoints of a pianist, com-poser, and two musicological analysts, from the moment the performer received a new work for solo piano, être-temps, by Bryn Harrison. Their article grew out of an interest in contemporary music and contemporary performance practice – fields that the authors acknowledge were poorly represented in the performance research literature. The pianist Philip Thomas found that three musical and practical concerns predominated in his learning process of the piece: the material itself; the consequences for the material of the rhythmic notation; and precision in relation to tempo and metric notation (Clarke et al., 205, p. 38). He discussed touch and the need to hone “even the most fleeting notes and gestures …” (p. 39) so that they were enlivened by his playing, exploring “the continuum of touch and sensuality between playing with the fingertip or the pad in order to get … the right colour” (p. 39), which he related to his playing of Morton Feldman’s works from the 1950s and 1960s. Thomas used metaphors to describe his response to a gesture, and finds that the visual appearance of the notation and the material “are inseparable” (p. 40).

Because of Kumari’s use of extreme registers, physical movement was a key issue for the authors in practice. Literature on the effect movement has on the communication of expressive intentions is therefore relevant. Davidson (2001) showed that movement that comes naturally to the performer positively affects audience perception of the performance.

To summarize relevant findings from the literature, research that describes how instrumentalists learn a work seldom names the music in question, or is based on familiar repertoire. It suggests that the first stage is one of playing through the piece to gain an overview of the structure and sound. Musicians writing intimately about their approach to music from 18th, 19th and 21st-century piano repertoire, found that time/rhythm issues often became a major focus, and that the relationships between notation and intention become important in newly composed 20th-century work. The role of the body in relation to the expressive aspects of a performance is also important and requires consideration by the performer.

Aim

This article addresses two research questions:

1. What were the important actions undertaken by the two pianists learning Kumari by which an interpretation was formed?

2. What commonalities of experience could be extracted and developed into a model for establishing an interpretation platform when learning a contemporary or stylistically chal-lenging piece of music?

Approach

Over a period of several years, the authors engaged in a process of sharing practice-based percep-tions around the preparation of Kumari. John-Steiner (2000) noted the relevance of Karl Wieck’s work in organizational settings to these types of situations, particularly his notion of “collective sense-making” and the need “to act in order to think” (p. 193). In the case of the authors’ experi-ence with Kumari, act and thought were separated and stretched out over time, creating a reflective space that was based on “the need to make sense,” and included “telling stories about joint



Viney and Blom 69

experiences.” Tellingly, the authors found that they had experienced many of the same challenges in their preparation of the work, suggesting the universality of interpretive issues in unfamiliar repertoire.

Blom initiated research into learning Kumari, sensing a fertile space for inquiry as she began working on the piece. During her practice, the author became interested in the experiences of other pianists who had learnt Kumari, and whether it might be possible to ascertain commonali-ties or contrasts of experience between pianists. As she developed a questionnaire for other pianists, she documented her own responses to the questions she was designing. The question-naire grew directly out of Blom’s experiences with the work, and covered a wide range of interpretive issues. The most pertinent questions from the questionnaire have been included as an appendix to demonstrate the variety of issues raised. This process was similar to that of Davidson (2004), who used an action research approach, with a questionnaire, to document opera rehearsals. It was also similar to that of Guck (2005) documenting her own preparation of Haydn’s Adagio.

Viney came across Blom’s (Blom & Edwards, 2006) writing about Kumari online, while learn-ing the piece, and made contact. Blom then interviewed Viney via email (they were not living in the same country), using the questionnaire. Viney worked on responses to the questionnaire while preparing Kumari for performance, giving the questionnaire a pseudo-diary function. Viney’s response to the questionnaire was over 2000 words in length, and the longest response was in rela-tion to question 6: “How did you go about learning this piece?” Analysis of both authors’ question-naire responses highlighted the need to acquire a conceptual framework (later termed an interpretation platform by the authors), before more practical implications (such as pedaling, touch, physical movement) could be considered.

The categories that arose from distilling the reflective questionnaire data formed a conceptual summary of the practice-led learning experience corroborated by both authors. Each category is termed an “element” (i.e., elements of the interpretation platform), and is presented in the “Findings” section below. Each element is briefly discussed from a general perspective, followed by relevant selections from the data presented as narrative or descriptive windows into the ele-ments, as manifested in the context of learning Kumari.

Kumari

A recording of a live performance by Viney of Kumari may be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj210xVNZXw. French pianist, Martine Gagnepain, and Australian pianists Roger Smalley and Blom have made commercial recordings of the piece.2

Kumari was composed in 1980 while Edwards was staying at Pearl Beach, New South Wales. During his daily “morning walk on a fire trail” the composer frequently heard sounds character-istic of the Australian bush (Edwards, 2006, p. 102). These sounds were then processed by his subconscious mind while composing, allowing him “to distil essential shapes and patterns which were then consciously assessed” (p. 102). Edwards (2014) has described Kumari, as having a “quiet intensity.” Others have noted a “cool beauty” (Blom & Edwards, 2006), and connected it with a series of “quiet, reflective works well known for their crystalline starkness and the sparing use of a refined series of musical gestures” (Stanhope, 2006, p. 103). These works are now labeled as Edwards’s “sacred series,” a term first applied to certain of Edwards’s pieces by Corinne D’Aston (1985, cited in Stanhope, 1994). The composer later adopted the term, consid-ering it an accurate description of the music’s implied function, as well as a convenient label (Stanhope, 2006).


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj210xVNZXw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj210xVNZXw



Composer Paul Stanhope (2006) has written further about notions of ritual in Kumari but reminds us that these terms “ritual” and “sacred” are not concerned with religious texts or ceremonies. Instead there is “ritual as an expression of artistic intention and imagination … that may be traced through a series of pieces which can help our understanding of ritual in a piece such as Kumari” (p. 103), and “in ritual-like methods of composition … [where] certain sound objects, through constant reinvention and repetition from one composition to the next, gain symbolic status” (p. 103).

Much of Kumari’s interpretive difficulty is due to its frequent use of long sustained pitches and chords, large time-intervals between cell-like motivic events, and a non-goal-oriented sense of structure and timing (see Figure 1). Although this type of texture is hardly radical in the context of 20th-century music, it nevertheless contributes to the music’s elusiveness. Kumari appears unique, owing nothing obvious to the music of other major composers.

Findings

Like Rink (2002) and Thomas (Clarke et al., 2005), the pianists adopted a non-linear approach to learn-ing Kumari. The important elements are presented here, however, in an order that portrays the process as cogent and logical, while acknowledging the blended non-linear learning processes that occur in reality. The authors offer the following elements as a framework for developing an interpretive plat-form in unfamiliar or contemporary classical repertoire (each element is expanded upon below):

Element 1: Getting to know the composerElement 2: Reading the scoreElement 3: Engaging with the musical parameters

Figure 1. First two lines of Kumari (1980), by Ross Edwards (reproduced with permission of the composer).



Viney and Blom 71

Element 4: AnchoringElement 5: Discussing the issues

Element 1: Getting to know the composer

While encouraging students to actively seek greater knowledge of the composers whose music they are practicing is standard teaching practice, this imperative is especially vital in relation to the current compositional climate of bewildering stylistic diversity. Without broad generic categories such as Classical or Romantic, the student of a contemporary or 20th-century composition needs to work harder at building a picture of the place and person behind the music’s origin. This stage typically involves two elements:

1. researching the composer’s biography, culture, and musical outputs (including the work being studied);

2. listening to as much of the composer’s music as possible; not only the piece in question, but other same-genre pieces where possible, and pieces in other genres.

In the case of contemporary classical works, however, an important third possibility exists; contacting the composer. Initiating contact with a composer (often through their website) in order to ask questions about their work is increasingly easy to achieve, and of clear benefit.

The following paragraphs describe the authors’ experiences during this vital stage. Both pianists knew the composer and his music to a certain extent. Yet the nature of Kumari was such that further knowledge and understanding was required for both pianists before they could confidently pro-gress with effective practice. Both pianists felt uncertain upon first opening the score (see Blom & Edwards, 2006), despite knowledge of other compositions by Ross Edwards. Their uncertainty sprang from a sense that the work represented a new musical paradigm, outside their stored mem-ory of aural experience. Similarly, painter Barbara Bolt (2006) “was left inadequate to the task of rendering this complex landscape [that is, on the edge of an Australian desert in Kalgoorlie] in paint” (p. 8) despite many years of practice. Donald Schön (1987) refers to this as an “indetermi-nate zone of practice – [with] uncertainty, uniqueness, and value conflict” (p. 6). He writes “when a practitioner recognizes a situation as unique, she cannot handle it solely by applying theories or techniques derived from her store of professional knowledge. And in situations of value conflict, there are no clear and self-consistent ends to guide the technical selection of means” (p. 6).

Each pianist reacted differently to this challenge. For Blom, the “indeterminate zone” prompted her to seek an interview with Ross Edwards and led to further reading about this type of uncertainty (Blom & Edwards, 2006). She remembered the 1973 premiere of his Mountain Village in a Clearing Mist for orchestra, and knew the sound of this work and that of several of his dance-like “maninya” works. Mountain Village was in the back of her mind as she began work on Kumari although she had not seen a score of the orchestral work and knew nothing of Mountain Village’s compositional background.

Viney sought information on the internet and in books in an attempt to deepen his understanding of Kumari. He knew that Edwards had written a series of works known as his “sacred series” around this period of his life. Further reading revealed the history behind the emergence of the “sacred” style – specifically, that Edwards had previously studied in Britain with Peter Maxwell Davies, and had gone through a period of modernism followed by compositional silence. This fact significantly impacted Viney’s thinking about the piece, as it supported his feeling that the music conveyed a sense of purity and zen-like focus – a return to simplicity after a flirtation with complexity and mod-ernism. By coincidence, only weeks before starting to learn Kumari, Viney had the experience,




(through a residency at the 2008 Dartington International Summer School), of rehearsing and per-forming Peter Maxwell Davies’s chamber opera The Lighthouse in the presence of the composer. He was therefore especially familiar with the occasional violence and complexity of Davies’s style. This experience threw the contrasting nature of Kumari into sharp relief for Viney.

During his reading, Viney was reminded of Edwards’s “maninya” pieces, which he had long associated with dance-like rhythms and a sense of ecstasy. He saw a connection between the more familiar energetic “maninya” style and this more spacious version of the same impulse in Kumari. The dance-like patterns were there, but they were transposed into a more expansive and leisurely rhythmic context – he considered these patterns in Kumari a transcendent or sacred version of the more profane earthiness found in the other music of Edwards he was familiar with up to that point.

It is clear from these observations that even though the performers were familiar with a certain amount of Edwards’s other work, further background research into Edwards himself was crucial in the development of an interpretive rapport with Kumari. This stage in the learning process would therefore be critical in the case of a performer coming across Edwards’ music for the very first time.

Element 2: Reading the Score

When working towards an interpretation platform, mining the score for information is especially important in contemporary works. Extra-musical information may offer crucial clues for under-standing the aesthetic aims of the composer. This was particularly the case in Kumari, and the following paragraph illustrates the potential interpretive benefits derived from serious considera-tion of non-musical elements in the score.

Edwards did not provide non-musical or programmatic information in Kumari. There is a potential hint, at best, at the end of the score where the date and place are signed; revealing the location of composition as Pearl Beach suggests a certain connection to nature, but nothing concrete. The title itself, however, is evocative and provocative. “Kumari” is a Sanskrit word meaning “pure, untainted by the world” (Edwards, 2014). Edwards said, “I’ve tried to go to the source … that’s … what the title is” (Blom & Edwards, 2006). This information is not in the published score and the performer needs to search for it. Blom experienced minor frustration at the lack of explanation of the title in the score, yet it was partly that lack of explanation that prompted her to research the piece further, ultimately leading to a more richly informed inter-pretation and understanding of the work. Understanding the title released Blom from notions of ritualistic symbolism she had associated with the Sanskrit word and allowed a less “tainted” placement of sounds in time and space, freer from overt bush symbolism such as bird calls and insect sounds. For Viney, the meaning of the title corresponds not only to the pure and distilled style of the music, but also connects to the experience of “bush-listening” that Edwards describes as fundamental to the genesis of the piece. The bush symbolizes a kind of natural purity, wilderness is, by definition “untainted by the (human) world.” The fact that Edwards chose a Sanskrit word is, Viney feels, evocative to western ears, in a way that enhances the spiritual dimension of the piece. Edwards said he sometimes puts images into people’s heads but would rather the audience (and presumably the performer) have the freedom to make their own associations (Blom & Edwards, 2006).

These observations demonstrate that sustained reflection and engagement with a non-musical parameter such as the work’s title can yield important insights in developing an interpretation plat-form. Neither pianist felt comfortable learning the piece before establishing a strong sense of the implications of the title. Such non-musical score-based information may provide crucial clues in many contemporary works for performers encountering an aesthetic for the first time.



Viney and Blom 73

Element 3: Engaging with the musical parameters

As a result of contemporary music’s tendency to depart from the common-practice harmonic and rhythmic patterns of traditional repertoire, scores such as Kumari are encountered more compre-hensively on their own terms. This implies that all parameters (pitch, rhythm, phrasing, dynamics, articulation, etc.) must be understood in such a way that the score’s every detail is accurately repro-duced in performance, at the same time relating each parameter to the aesthetic whole. The follow-ing describes the ways in which the pianists developed ideas for effective interpretation of relevant parameters.

As with Guck’s (2005) and Rink’s (1995) writing about interpreting traditional works, problems of rhythm and timing were of significant concern in learning Kumari, although the particular issues in this case are unique to more recent styles of music. As occasionally occurs in contemporary works, Kumari lacks bar lines. Whereas dispensing with bar lines implies a sense of freedom and improvisation in works such as Baroque unmeasured preludes, Kumari maintains rhythmic rigor and specificity. The underlying pulse often changes from one motivic cell to the next – a fact that, when combined with very long durations, creates a subtle but significant rhythmic and counting challenge. Viney experimented with various approaches to the rhythm of the cells, the most suc-cessful involved maintaining a feeling of the smallest unit of pulsation (semi-quaver in the first movement), but always being free to switch between different units depending on the predominat-ing note values of the particular moment. Blom began counting at the quaver level with breathing (and a slight lift of the head) helping the dotted quaver figures; at times a crotchet beat could be maintained. Both pianists felt that the rhythm should be learnt with utmost precision, (as with Thomas in Clarke et al., 2005), especially in light of Edwards’s statement that he would test the shapes and patterns “for hours, playing them on the piano, listening to them in my head as I walked on the beach, gradually refining rhythms, minutely adjusting linear sequences and vertical align-ments” (Edwards, 2006, p. 102).

Viney tried to avoid playing Kumari in a way that suggested a formal structure, lest the listener experience a goal-oriented sensation of time that did not seem appropriate to the score’s aesthetic paradigm. Instead, he aimed to let the music create an atmosphere of semi-randomness, much like the natural sound environment of the bush itself. Edwards describes the work as being “in two parts, related only by their quiet intensity and the manner in which their respective cellular material is subjected to a process of varied repetition and accretive growth” (Edwards, 2014). This under-standing of an accretive growth helped deepen Viney’s listening while playing, and Blom’s place-ment of the cells in time. Viney treated slurs and phrase markings as essential components of the interpretation that demarcate the identity of sound-events but didn’t try to build a sense of those cells being related or growing into larger phrase structures.

The role of dynamics in Kumari required special consideration. Each cell is assigned a carefully calibrated dynamic marking, and subtle distinctions between markings need to be made audible. In order to create the purity Edwards describes as inherent in the music, as well as the non-human objectivity implied by the sonic environment of the bush, the pianist must recreate each dynamic marking precisely when repeating a previously heard cell or gesture. On a micro level of sound-detail, the role of objective listening while playing Kumari was crucial to both authors. Because the piece depends on the specific nature of the instrument in performance (for example, length of decay, particular overtone vibrations, sympathetic vibrations, bass register quality, brightness of the treble) both authors were aware of variations to shaping during performance.

Both Blom and Viney were conscious of movement due to Kumari’s frequent alternation between the extreme ends of the keyboard and central registers. Each pianist had to experiment with ways of moving that were not familiar from previous repertoire and experience. Viney




experimented with minimal, restricted movements, but eventually found slow movement during long durations more natural, calibrating the motion according to the length of held chords. This created a physical connection to the unfolding of time during performance. Blom felt like a bird with arms out-stretched while playing parts of Kumari, whether making decisions to leave them out with fingers extended, or bring them in somewhat, while awaiting placement of the next chord. Neither player felt that holding the notes down with fingers created the right sound or sense of space and time, so extensive use of the sustain pedal was crucial. The piano was thus treated like a resonant percussion instrument being played with soft mallets, rather than a melodic instrument. Both pianists felt more comfortable sitting to the right on the bench, as more coordination was required higher up. Ultimately, after a period of experimentation, each pianist found ways of mov-ing that felt “natural” (albeit new), connecting with Davidson’s (2001) notion that natural move-ments by the performer were likely to be favorably perceived by the audience.

These observations highlight the importance of highly contextualized consideration of all musi-cal parameters. In the case of Kumari, rhythm, dynamics, shaping, register and body placement were all best understood through the prism of the general aesthetic aims of the piece rather than a standardized or formulaic approach. To be sure, this is certainly also true of traditional or familiar repertoire. It is, however, worth noting this as an example in which those aesthetic aims had to be uncovered by the performers, as opposed to being drawn from a body of assumed general stylistic knowledge.

Element 4: Anchoring

Performers can benefit from drawing on their experiential “baggage” when crafting an interpreta-tion of a less familiar work. Steve Feld (1994) said, “we rarely confront sounds that are totally new, unusual, and without experiential anchors. Hence, each experience in listening necessarily con-notes prior, contemporary, and future listenings” (p. 83). He continued by saying that as we listen, we work through “the dialectics in a series of ‘interpretative moves’, developing choices and jux-taposing background knowledge” (p. 86). For both authors, Kumari offered few “experiential anchors.” Viney found himself going through his musical “experiential anchors,” as if trying on different aesthetic “costumes.” His thought process was scattershot: “maybe it’s like Messiaen? With some bells here and colors there and ritual here – maybe it’s Morton Feldman, with intensely beautiful sounds enveloped by eternal silences - maybe it’s Cagean … or post-minimalist, hypnotic … or the long unbreakable line of late Beethoven.” None of these (often contradictory) associa-tions, however, he felt to be convincing.

For both authors there was a “eureka” moment, when a compelling image of the music emerged in the performer’s imagination. For Viney, as described above, Edwards’s description of a sym-bolic representation of bush sounds heard during a walk provided that image. This new approach at first seemed to directly negate Viney’s earlier experimentation with Messiaen-like or Feldmanesque influences. Yet on later reflection, both performers also understood, almost contra-dictorily, that several ideas were carried through from earlier thinking. For example, some ele-ments of Viney’s experience with Messiaen’s piano music were retained, including an approach to color and resonance. And Blom related Edwards’s use of both extremes of the piano range to Messiaen’s use of color and resonance in his piano works, in particular Catalogue d’oiseaux. A general sense of ritual (as opposed to a strictly religious sense) helped Viney create atmosphere at the performance, largely thanks to Stanhope’s (2006) article. Lakoff and Johnson (1999) wrote, “We cannot think (much less talk) about time without … metaphors” (p. 66). Blom adopted meta-phors of religious ritual – bells, gongs, echoes – to understand the sounding and placement of Edwards’ figures or cells in time. While she didn’t feel this was ultimately what the composer



Viney and Blom 75

intended, the notion nevertheless left an imprint on her interpretation. Finally, while not treating the work as experimental in the Cagean sense, Viney felt there was still a sense in which the audi-ence was being asked to focus on relatively few events, and that this was made easier by the exist-ence of Cage’s work, something that gave Viney the confidence to take his time, and to feel unhurried and unself-conscious.

This process highlights the non-linear character of practice-led research. Through creative experimentation after hitting a roadblock, various combinations of old knowledge and newly acquired knowledge can synthesize to form a new interpretive vision. Both pianists found the pro-cess of sifting through “experiential anchors” useful.

Element 5: Discussing the issues

Both pianists found that actively seeking discussion with peers or colleagues generated unexpected insights, feedback, and encouragement. During the uncertain initial learning phase, Viney encoun-tered Blom’s article in a publication of practice-led writings that emerged from her performance and recording of the work for the Aurora festival in 2006. From this article, Viney’s first reaction was that of relief that another pianist had experienced the same sense of uncertainty regarding the work. By reading the description of Blom’s journey from uncertainty, through her interview with Edwards, leading to her internalization of new understandings, Viney benefited in several ways. He partly appreciated the specific information pertaining to Kumari, but also developed an apprecia-tion for “collective sense-making.” Through integrating his own thought processes with new infor-mation from Blom’s article and interview with Edwards, Viney was able to eventually come to a personally convincing vision of the musical character of Kumari.

Another key event in Viney’s learning process occurred when he played the work for a col-league – an experimental composer based at California Institute of the Arts, an expert in the American experimental tradition. At the time, Viney was trying to figure out if “anchoring” Kumari in the experimental tradition might strengthen his understanding and interpretation of the piece (after having dispensed with the Messiaen-like approach). His colleague noted that Edwards was very specific in his notation, with all musical parameters carefully articulated. There was no need to impose any particular aesthetic framework – “simply play the notes as written!” Viney realized that he had been over-thinking the work, and that the music would speak best through faithful execution. For Viney, the whittling away of pre-conceived aesthetic contortions led to his most authentic performance. Here he understands authenticity to mean that his performance attempted to allow the music to speak on its own terms, free of imposed aesthetic associations. Put another way, it means seeking to produce “the clearest possible revelation of that music so that its intrinsic qualities, vitality and value are presented again as vividly as they may conceivably ever have been” (Leppard, 1988, cited in Rubidge, 1996, p. 227). The word “again” reveals Leppard’s early music interests, thereby allowing the work “to act upon the present by revealing new possibilities within, and new understandings of, the work” (Rubidge 1996, p. 227). This “acting upon the present” was essential for Viney when he played to audience members at his Los Angeles concert. It could not be assumed that that audience could relate to Kumari as a distillation or symbol of Australian bush-listening experiences.

This collaborative aspect of the pianists’ learning process connects with John-Steiner’s (2000) understanding of Wieck’s collective sense-making, and implies that actively seeking discussion with peers, colleagues, or teachers can be a stimulating and fruitful endeavor for students of a new and unfamiliar work. It could be argued from this example that a more socially collaborative approach to developing an interpretive platform is beneficial even for established and experienced performers learning a solo work.




Conclusions

While the model presented here resembles Chaffin and Imreh’s (2002) initial stages (“Scouting it Out” and “The Grey Stage” in particular), the authors’ experiences suggest significant differ-ences between the processes for traditional repertoire and contemporary repertoire. Chief among these is that a fundamental aesthetic or stylistic uncertainty may linger for a longer period in the case of a contemporary work, and that special attention is required to establish an interpretive platform.

Both Blom and Viney employed a non-linear approach in developing their understanding and forming their interpretation of Kumari. Strategies included: reading practice-led writing about playing Kumari; interviewing and emailing the composer; understanding and considering Edwards’ compositional style and compositional periods; listening to recordings of Kumari, or other works by the composer from that period; contemplating the title of the work; linking aspects of the work to the sounds of other composers (mainly Messiaen and Feldman in this case); listening experiments such as filtering a mental image of the music through the imagined sound-world of the Australian bush; experimenting with metaphors such as musical ritual to connect with Kumari’s unusual structure; and playing the work to musician colleagues for comment.

General implications arising from this model include:

1. an awareness that understanding the aesthetic nature of a conceptually difficult music may require the allowance of more time in the learning process;

2. associations with the music of other composers may be useful;3. rhythmic complexity may need several approaches;4. dynamics and timbre may be an important considerations as a specific parameters in 20th-

century music;5. use of extreme piano registers requires consideration of physical aspects for practical and

expressive purposes that must come naturally;6. metaphor can play a role in developing interpretation.

In summary, this article suggests that stylistically challenging contemporary repertoire may require a preparation stage that establishes an interpretation platform before comprehen-sively informed and effective practice can occur, and that, in this sense at least, learning contemporary music may require extra work for the performer. This contextual stage ideally begins earlier than the first stages documented in the literature and includes a variety of ele-ments. It is crucial for acquiring an understanding of the music, what Pask (1976) calls “com-prehension learning.” This preparation is exterior to Chaffin and Imreh’s (2002) “Scouting it Out” and Hallam’s (1995) “overview” of the work, and may occur over an extended period of practice.

The interpretation platform is a preparation stage that can be adopted by other pianists learning or teaching Kumari, other works by Edwards, and other stylistically challenging contemporary piano music. More broadly, it may serve as a model for any individual engaged with less familiar repertoire, and may, therefore, be of benefit to music educators working with challenging reper-toire for ensembles and other musical groups.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.



Viney and Blom 77

Notes

1. Liam Viney – ‘Piano Spheres’, Los Angeles, 11 November 2008; Diana Blom – Aurora Festival, Parramatta, Sydney, 29 April 2006.

2. Voices – Roger Smalley (piano), Tall Poppies Records (1995) TP060; Aujourd’hui l’Australie – Martine Gagnepain (piano), Galun Records (SMG-0108226); Jo-Wha – Diana Blom (piano), Wirripang (2006).

References

Blom, D., & Edwards, R. (2006). Preparing Ross Edwards’ Kumari for performance: Conceptual planning. In S. Macarthur, B. Crossman & R. Morelos (Eds.), Intercultural music: Creation and interpretation (pp. 111–115). Sydney: Australian Music Centre.

Blom, D., Wright, D., & Bennett, D. (2008). The artist as academic: Arts practice as a site of knowledge. In M. Hannan (Ed.), Educating musicians for a lifetime of learning, Proceedings of the 17th International Seminar of the Commission for the Education of the Professional Musician (CEPROM) (pp. 5–9). Nedlands, Western Australia: ISME.

Bolt, B. (2006). A non-standard deviation: Handlability, praxical knowledge and practice-led research. In Speculation and innovation: Applying practice led research in the Creative Industries. Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology. Retrieved from http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/43079/Bolt2005.pdf

Chaffin, R., & Imreh, G. (2002). Stages of practice revisited. In R. Chaffin, G. Imreh & M. Crawford (Eds.), Practicing perfection – memory and piano performance (pp. 239 – 246). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Clarke, E., Cook, N., Harrison, B., & Thomas, P. (2005). Interpretation and performance in Bryn Harrison’s être-temps. Musicae Scientiae, 19(1), 31–74.

Cook, N. (2001). Between process and product: Music and/as performance. Music Theory Online, 7(2). Retrieved from http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.01.7.2/mto.01.7.2.cook.html

D’Aston, C. (1985). The sacred music of Ross Edwards. Unpublished bachelor’s thesis, University of Sydney, Australia.

Davidson, J. (2001). The role of the body in the production and perception of solo vocal performance: A case study of Annie Lennox. Musicae Scientiae, V(2), 235–256.

Davidson, J. W. (2004). Making a reflexive turn: Practical music-making becomes conventional research. In J. W. Davidson (Ed.), The music practitioner: Research for the music performer, teacher and listener (pp. 133–147). Aldershot: Ashgate.

Edwards, R. (1982). Kumari [published score]. London: Faber Music.Edwards, R. (2006). Kumari: Reminiscence. In S. Macarthur, B. Crossman & R. Morelos (Eds.), Intercultural

music: Creation and interpretation (pp. 101–102). Sydney: Australian Music Centre.Edwards, R. (2014). Kumari (1980): For piano solo. Retrieved from http://www.rossedwards.com/?page_

id=40Feld, S. (1994). Communication, music and speech about music. In C. Keil & S. Feld (Eds.), Music Grooves

(pp. 77–95). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Guck, M. (2005). Dramatic progression in Haydn, Sonata No. 46 in A-flat, Adagio. In D. Stein (Ed.), Engaging

music – essays in music analysis (pp. 180–190). New York: Oxford University Press.Hallam, S. (1995). Professional musicians’ approaches to the learning and interpretation of music. Psychology

of Music, 23, 111–128.Hallam, S. (2001). The development of metacognition in musicians: Implications for education. British

Journal of Music Education, 18(1), 27–39.John-Steiner, V. (2000). Creative collaboration. Oxford: Oxford University PressLakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh – the embodied mind and its challenge to Western

thought. New York: Basic Books.Leppard, R. (1988). Authenticity in music. London: Faber Music.Pask, G. (1976). Styles and strategies of learning. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 46, 128–148.


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http://www.rossedwards.com/?page_id=40



Rink, J. (1995). Performance and analysis: Interaction and interpretation. In J. Rink (Ed.), The Practice of performance: Studies in musical interpretation (pp. 197–216). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rink, J. (2002). Analysis and performance. In J. Rink (Ed.), Musical performance – a guide to understanding (pp. 35–58). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rubidge, S. (1996). Does authenticity matter? The case for and against authenticity in the performing arts. In P. Campbell (Ed.), Analysing performance – a critical reader (pp. 219–233). Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Rubidge, S. (2005). Artists in the academy: Reflections on artistic practice as research. Paper presented at Dance Rebooted: Initialising the Grid, Deakin University, Australia. Retrieved from http://www.aus-dance.org.au/resources/publications/rebooted/rebootedpdfs/Rubidge.pdf

Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.Stanhope, P. (1994). The music of Ross Edwards: Aspects of ritual. Unpublished master’s thesis, University

of Wollongong, Australia.Stanhope, P. (2006). “Into that mysterious world”: Notions of ritual in Kumari by Ross Edwards. In S.

Macarthur, B. Crossman & R. Morelos (Eds.), Intercultural music: Creation and interpretation (pp. 103–110). Sydney: Australian Music Centre.

Author biographies

Liam Viney is the Piano Performance Fellow at the University of Queensland, Australia. He maintains an active performance career as a solo pianist and in two Ensembles in Residence at the university. His music performance research interests include recent Australian piano repertoire, duo pianism, and the relationship between teaching and performing.

Diana Blom is Associate Professor in Music at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Current research interests focus on tertiary performance (assessing group performance, collaboration, interpreta-tion, collaborative essay writing); placement of melodic dissonance in the musical; and how arts practi-tioners working in academia view their practice as research. As a composer and performer (harpsichord and piano), she engages in practice-led research. Score and CD publications are with Wirripang Pty. Ltd. and Orpheus Music.

Appendix

Excerpted questionnaire

1. What do you know of the relationship between Kumari and other works of Edwards written around the same time? Did this impact on your thinking?

2. What do you feel is the relationship between the title, “kumara” (a Sanskrit word meaning “pure, untainted by the world”) and the piece?

3. How did you go about learning this piece? 4. Steve Feld says of his notion, “interpretative moves” – “we rarely confront sounds that are

totally new, unusual, and without experiential anchors. Hence, each experience in listening necessarily connotes prior, contemporary, and future listenings.” What musical connotation/ “baggage” were you aware of deliberately bringing to the piece (at least at first) from other musics played and heard and using this to shape (at least initially) Kumari?

5. There is no information about the work or the composer at the front of the score Kumari. How could this information be useful to a performer preparing the work?

6. What are your ideas for the shaping/structuring of the work?

i. What are your ideas for the shaping/structuring of Movement 1? ii. What are your ideas for the shaping/structuring of Movement 2?


http://www.ausdance.org.au/resources/publications/rebooted/rebootedpdfs/Rubidge.pdf

http://www.ausdance.org.au/resources/publications/rebooted/rebootedpdfs/Rubidge.pdf


Viney and Blom 79

7. A brief description of the work on the web says: “the work is in two parts, related only by their quiet intensity and the manner in which their respective cellular material is subjected to a pro-cess of varied repetition and accretive growth.” What are your ideas for the shaping, in perfor-mance, of this repetition and accretive growth?

8. Did you use imagery and/or metaphor to understand and shape aspects the work through per-formance? If so, how?

9. Do you think the note values should be counted and played exactly in Kumari or are they more an indication of time relationships?

10. What do you think of the use of soft pedal in the piece, as against soft playing?11. The performer is left with long notes to hold (or at least hold the sustain pedal for). What were

thoughts and planning for your body movement (or lack of) during the playing?12. The piece physically explores the extreme ends of the piano. What were your thoughts and

planning for your body movement during the playing?13. Please write about any other aspect of your preparation of this piece for performance



international journal of preparing stylistically

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