The workshop as a research tool

School of Advanced Study, University of London

Description: Owing to various recent cultural-economic factors, which led to transformations in the structuring of the Higher Education sector and in the funding strategies of Research Councils, favourable conditions have emerged for the introduction of expert performers into academia and for the potential integration of their professional knowledge and artistic experience into traditional research cultures. There is, however, no clear consensus at present on how the relationship between musical performance and research is to be understood, and how performance can be integrated into the research enterprise both methodologically and as outcome. Based on the hypothesis that musical performance in the Western classical tradition is not ipso facto a research activity, this seminar explores methods that are appropriate for undertaking practice-based research in music performance, and proposes the workshop as an important research tool. It discusses the nature of a workshop, considers historical precedents and provides a practical demonstration of a workshop, investigating how a pianist undertakes to influence/shape the listener’s aesthetic evaluation of the performance of the first movement of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in B-flat major K.333.

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