Research & Knowledge Exchange

2012

Emerging Research Strands

March 2010

Premiere performance of Paul Newland’s Shellac for chamber orchestra. Paul is announced winner of the New Millennium Composer's Award for the work.

The Rambert Dance Company takes Julian Anderson’s The Comedy of Change on a UK-wide 9-month dance tour. The work is later recorded commercially by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

April 2010

Getting it right? Performance Practices in Contemporary Music Conference, directed by Julian Anderson, with keynote Helmut Lachenmann.UK premiere of Richard Baker’s Gaming by members of the Philharmonia Orchestra.One-act musical The Last Five Years forms the basis of a collaborative project between Guildhall School drama and music students.

August 2010UK premiere of Julian Anderson’s Fantasias for Orchestra at the BBC Proms.

November 2010Performance of Badenheim 1939 involving a cast of drama students and musicians, directed by Christian Burgess with music composed by Julian Philips.

February 2011

New Opera Research Day.Music and the Mind: Essays in Honour of John Sloboda published by Oxford University Press.

March 2011

The School’s renowned Jazz department collaborates with ResearchWorks to present the first Improvisation Fringe as part of the annual Jazz Festival.Completion of AHRC Voiceworks Project.

Gail Brand presents findings from research exploring the relationship between the live jazz performer and their audience, the first in a series of events presenting outcomes of ‘Understanding Audiences’.

April 2011

Stepping out of the shadows: practitioners becoming researchers seminar – a ResearchWorks study day.

Launch of Shift, initiated by the Barbican Centre and Guildhall School.

May 2011London Sinfonietta commissions the Guildhall School to evaluate Blue Touch Paper.Rolf Hind collaborates with Helmut Lachenmann on the piano concerto Ausklang.

Shakespeare in the City Study Day with contributions from Patsy Rodenburg and Charles Nicholl.

Highlights = ResearchWorks event

directed by Pamela Lidiard

A week of performances of Iain Burnside’s latest production

A Soldier and a Maker and an Ivor Gurney Study Day in Spring

2012 will mark the launch of this new strand of research.

Building on the particular strength of our existing research in

this field, not least through the distinguished work of Graham

Johnson, the strand will focus on the song repertoire, casting

new light on the part that text, subtext and context play in the

transformation of poetry into song. We will also explore the

role literature has played in the work of particular composers,

for instance Debussy and the Symbolist poets, the literary

background to Schumann’s piano works or the influence of

Lamartine on Liszt. Graham Johnson, Eugene Asti, Paul Roberts

and Iain Burnside will contribute to the area.

Voiceworks Project A collaboration between Birkbeck Centre for Poetics, Wigmore Hall and the Guildhall SchoolSince 2006, Birkbeck’s Contemporary Poetics Research Centre and the Composition and Vocal Departments at the Guildhall School have been exploring the possibilities in the making of new works for voice. each October a group of eight poets and writers is matched with composers and singers to form creative teams. Through workshops and seminars, in which students exchange work and examine other traditions and practice, the groups develop songs. The process culminates in performance events at the Guildhall School and Wigmore Hall, London’s leading international venue for song. The project received a major AHRC grant to develop its online and digital impact which has resulted in a new website to showcase the activities of participants and to act as an interface for research, discussion and innovation in song.

www.voiceworks.org.uk

A Companion to Schubert Song

by Graham JohnsonGraham Johnson’s seminal text on Schubert song, running to three volumes of 1200 words each, will be published by Yale University Press and the Guildhall School in April 2013. A book launch to mark the occasion will be held at the Wigmore Hall, with the Duke of Kent in attendance. Graham’s next planned volume will focus on Poulenc, with a festival of his songs at the School in Autumn 2013, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of his death.

Schubert Song ArrangementsThe first volume of Jane Booth’s Schubert song arrangements for clarinet and piano by the famous clarinet virtuoso Carl Baermann will be released in March 2012, with four further volumes due for release later in the year. These editions, published by fountayne editions will be accompanied by two CD recordings of the works released by sfz music.

A Soldier and a Maker by Iain Burnside

Seventy-five years after his death, and despite the recognised mastery of songs such as ‘Sleep’, many of Ivor Gurney’s works remain unpublished and unknown. Around a quarter of his songs are in the public domain and a complete edition of his 1500 poems is only now in preparation. In the most recent of his unique ‘dramatised song’ series, which includes Lads in their Hundreds, Burnside has created a new theatre piece using Gurney’s songs, poems and letters to tell the story of his life: A Soldier and a Maker will premiere at the Barbican Pit in April 2012.

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Performing at the Heart of Knowledge

Completion of the ESRC funded project Promoting social engagement and well-being in older people through community supported participation in musical activities.

What musicians can learn from working on stage with actors: a workshop sponsored by the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice & Institute of Musical Research.

September 2011The School launches its new practice-based doctorate.Working Together: an enquiry into creative collaborative learning across the Barbican-Guildhall Campus published.

Autumn 2011Launch of Theatrum Mundi – Making Urban Culture.

December 2011Dr Helena Gaunt appointed as an Associate of CMPCP.Completion of Palatine funded research into the nature and purpose of Master-classes.

Guildhall School, Stage Technologies and TCCE present an Automation in Performance Conference.

Completion of Patsy Rodenburg’s 8-Disc DVD Patsy Rodenburg Brings You: Shakespeare In The Present

January 2012Jacqueline Ross appointed one of CMPCP’s first Visiting Fellows.

March 20123rd International Reflective Conservatoire Conference: Performing at the Heart of Knowledge. World premiere of Julian Anderson’s The Discovery of Heaven for orchestra by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Mark Elder at the Royal Festival Hall.

The work will be recorded commercially following its premiere.

ResearchWorks hosts a study day on the life of Ivor Gurney, directed by Iain Burnside. The event marks the launch of Words becoming Music – a new strand of research at the School.

Spring 2012Jacqueline Ross’ latest recordings of Schubert’s complete works for violin and fortepiano are released

by Naxos and include an original adaptation of the flute variations on “Trockne Blumen”.Preparing for success: a practical guide for young musicians: a new publication co-authored by Prof Susan Hallam and Dr Helena Gaunt, published by Institute of Education Press. Paul Roberts’ latest publication Reflections: the Piano Music of Maurice Ravel is published by Amadeus Press.

…think only this of me… Photo: Clive Barda

understanding

Collaboration is central to our research and lies at

the heart of many of the artistic outputs. In addition,

the growing partnership between the Guildhall

School, Barbican Centre and London Symphony

Orchestra (LINK Alliance) is generating a unique

interface between research, knowledge exchange,

arts production and learning. Major projects are

addressing issues concerning the value of the arts,

their potential in multi-disciplinary contexts, and

the imaginative space they provide to catalyse new

paradigms within and beyond the creative economy.

This work feeds back into the preparation of the

next generations of artists, making of new work, our

cultural programming and the roles our institutions

play in society. A recent study commissioned by the

Barbican Centre and Guildhall School titled Working

Together examines the place of ‘creative collaborative

learning’ across the Campus.

Emerging strands include:

Capturing London’s Audiences This project is part of ‘Creativeworks London’; one of four multi-million pound Knowledge exchange Hubs for the Creative economy funded by the AHRC. Commencing in summer 2012, Capturing London’s Audiences will explore changing audiences and participation in London’s cultural events, characteristics of live experiences and participation from a physical distance, and ways in which emerging artists may extend and deepen interaction with audiences. The project will also engage closely with evolving practices and challenges faced by small and medium enterprises (SMes).

directed by Professor John Sloboda

The Understanding Audiences programme has been investigating performer-audience relations and communication in diverse contexts, including the premiere of a new composition, an innovative staging of a Monteverdi Opera, a staged performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion designed to build new younger audiences for classical masterpieces, chamber music performances which reintroduce the lost art of classical improvisation, innovative music-theatrical productions where musicians and actors interact on stage, a series of gigs in a London jazz club, and an event where audience members were encouraged to get out of their seats and move expressively during a classical music performance. What unites these projects is a concern to deepen performers’ understanding of, and connection to, their audiences in a way which enhances effective artistic development and practice.

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‘ The alliance for creative excellence between the Guildhall School, Barbican Centre and LSO is at the heart of what we’re all trying to achieve –an innovative partnership that allows a world-class conservatoire, world-class venue and world-class orchestra to collaborate and learn from each other...stimulating a new generation of students to think in new ways ’Sir Nicholas Kenyon, Managing Director, Barbican Centre

Theatrum Mundi: Making Urban Culture This innovative programme of work exploring how cultural practices can give new life to cities throughout the world unites several of the world’s leading cultural and academic institutions, including the London School of economics, Barbican Centre, Weltkulturen Museum, frankfurt LAB and Columbia University, serving as a laboratory for ideas, focusing on how architecture and urban planning can bridge culture’s two domains, as anthropology and as art. The phrase “Theatrum mundi” derives from a Renaissance view of urban culture that connected the performing stage – scenography, choreography, music as well as plays – to life on a city’s streets. The theatre became a site for experiments in urban design.

‘ Theatrum Mundi is no more – and no less – than

an effort to translate ‘lively’, ‘arousing’ and ‘engaging’ into

pavement, glass and steel ’Professor Richard Sennett,

London School of Economics

April 2012

Premiere of Burnside’s A Soldier and a Maker at the Barbican Pit

May 2012

A staged performance of Monteverdi’s Il Combattimento at the Wallace Collection, led by Dr Andrew Lawrence-King. 6th Innovative Conservatoire seminar, held at Dartington, UK.

Summer 2012Publication of a special edition of Scientia Paedagogica Experimentalis devoted to methodological approaches in researching one-to-one in instrumental/vocal tuition, edited by Dr. Helena Gaunt and Ruth Rondas.

June 2012Launch of a City of Ideas as part of Theatrum Mundi on 23 – 24 June 2012.

Launch of the AHRC Hub: ‘Creativeworks London’, building new partnerships and commercial opportunities between academia and the creative economy.

July 2012Completion of St. Matthew Passion Project, a project funded by Vocal Futures.

Premiere of a new dance collaboration between Julian Philips, choreographer Mikael ‘Marso’ Riviere and the Aurora Orchestra.

September 2012Launch of coLABorate, student led collaborative projects for the next generation of artists.

October 2012

Dr Susan Youens, professor at Notre Dame University in Indiana will lead a research day on late Schumann at LSO St. Luke’s, including contributions from Graham Johnson & Eugene Asti.

December 2012Premiere of Julian Philips’ children’s opera Good Intentions at the Riverside Studios, London

Late 2012Collaborative Learning in Higher Music Education: what, why and how? edited by Helena Gaunt & Heidi Westerlund, published by Ashgate.

Photo: francis Moss

Shift Shift is an action research initiative that, over three years, will interrogate structures, support and learning opportunities that currently exist for supporting artists at all stages of their careers. Shift will commission and facilitate new work in participatory settings and evaluate its impact in society through the collaborative processes undertaken, the artistic outcomes achieved and the audience experience.

Shift is funded by ‘ArtWorks: Developing Practice in Participatory Settings’, a Paul Hamlyn Foundation (PHF) Special Initiative with support and funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Creativity Culture & Education (supported by Arts Council England) and the Cultural Leadership Programme.

Blue Touch Paper The London Sinfonietta, one of the world’s elite contemporary music ensembles, has commissioned the Guildhall School to evaluate Blue Touch Paper, a project which supports interdisciplinary collaborations for composers, due for completion in late 2012.

Forthcoming Highlights

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= ResearchWorks project

Emerging Research Strands

Hyperion to release the most comprehensive survey of Dohnanyi’s piano music performed by Martin Roscoe.

April 2013

Book launch for Graham Johnson’s A Companion to Schubert Song to be held at the Wigmore Hall.

ResearchWorks: a dynamic programme of events

centered around the School’s key research

strands, bringing together staff, students and

guests of international standing.

For details of forthcoming research events visit www.gsmd.ac.uk/research

...think only this of me... Photo: Clive Barda

Julian Philips' The Yellow Sofa, Glyndebourne festival 2009. Photo: Simon Laundon

Also from 2013

2013

The second Getting it right? Performance Practices in Contemporary Music Conference, directed by Julian Anderson at LSO St. Luke’s on 9 February 2013.A festival of Poulenc songs celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of his death, with Graham Johnson.

2014The completion of Julian Anderson’s 3-act opera Thebans, a commission by English National Opera.

20154th International Reflective Conservatoire Conference.

2016Shakespeare 400th Anniversary event with partners including National Theatre, Tate Globe and the British Library.

new opera, music and theatre in development and performance

directed by Julian Philips and Christian BurgessRecent creative research to emerge from this strand includes the results of Julian Philips’ AHRC-funded composer residency at Glyndebourne Festival Opera. This encompasses Philips’ operas Followers (Glyndebourne, August 2011) – a site-specific promenade opera with Simon Christmas, and The Yellow Sofa, based on a novella by Eca de Queiros, which was premiered at Glyndebourne in August 2009, revived in August 2012 before forming the third production of Glyndebourne’s autumn 2012 regional tour. Julian Anderson’s Thebans – a 3-act opera with libretto by Frank McGuinness – was commissioned by English National Opera for premiere in May 2014. The process of developing new operatic work was the subject of a ResearchWorks study day, which stimulated debate and the exchange of ideas between operatic practitioners, students and the wider opera audience.

...think only this of me... A devised collaboration between musicians and actors

…think only this of me… saw a company of 31 actors and musicians working together to devise a piece of theatre that aimed to have both personal and universal significance. Director Christian Burgess, Composer Julian Philips and Associate Director Dinah Stabb worked initially with a group of european actors and musicians from the Guildhall School in San Miniato in the summer of 2011 to explore ideas for the piece. A series of questions emerged, including:

• WHO ARe We?

• DOeS MeMORY INfORM OUR SeNSe Of IDeNTITY?

• If fACeD WITH IMMINeNT DeMISe, WHAT IS IT THAT

We WANT TO COMMUNICATe, AND TO WHOM?

These themes, along with others that emerged as the work progressed, were explored by the company, and researched by Dr Biranda ford who collaborated in the whole creative process as a violinist. She observed from within the evolution of ideas into action and theatrical form. every word of text and musical sound in the piece was devised by the company.

thecreative

stage

ProjectsA selection of current projects

Fantasias for large orchestraJulian AndersonCommissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra, this 5 movement work is an extended study in testing limits of musical continuity. The research for the project, extended over three years, was explored and tested in composition seminars given throughout the UK and US. The tests involved cutting existing pieces of music from various eras into discrete segments and subjecting them to various alterations: electronic modulations, filtering, granulation; changing the order of the segments within a piece; combining segments from different pieces to test their sequential character. Through such experiments, an insight into musical continuity and its problems in contemporary art music in building a coherent musical structure of some complexity or ambiguity was gained. The UK premiere by the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain under Semyon Bychkov at the BBC Proms 2010 was televised live on BBC2. Recent performances include the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski. Fantasias won the 2011 British Composer Award for Orchestral Composition organised by BASCA.

Helmut Lachenmann Piano Concerto: from score to performance

This project enabled composer and pianist Rolf Hind to work intensively with Lachenmann and to document their collaboration in realising the distinctive and highly personal playing techniques employed in Ausklang – a concerto for piano and orchestra. Detailed analytic documentation of the process will offer findings of benefit to future generations of performers and listeners.

Professional orchestral musicians in the twenty-first century: what does it take to become one and to sustain being one?

This project, initiated within Centre for Orchestra, is being extended to musicians from each of two of the Barbican’s International Associates Orchestras, the New York Philharmonic and the Leipzig Gewandhaus, as part of the second phase. Alongside journal publications, findings are informing the development of a new Principal Study module in Orchestral Artistry in association with the London Symphony Orchestra as part of the existing Guildhall Artist Masters programme.

RefLeCTIVe CONSeRVATOIRe CONfeReNCe

Launched in 2006, this triennial international

conference is the leading event of its kind,

bringing together researchers, professional

performers and teachers in music and drama

from all over the world. Keynote speakers

have included:

• Professor Richard Sennett, Professor of

Sociology, London School of economics and

New York University

• Sir Nicholas Kenyon, Managing Director,

Barbican Centre

• Sir Christopher Frayling, Rector,

Royal College of Art

• Professor Johannes Johansson, Principal,

Royal College of Music, Stockholm

For information on the recent conference

Performing at the Heart of Knowledge held in March 2012 visit http://rcconference2012.org.uk

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Co-teaching as Co-learning This project brought together two tutors, Dinah Stabb and Armin Zanner from the School’s Drama and Vocal departments, working in tandem once per week with a class of vocal students. The tutors have encountered new models for their own one-to-one and group teaching and the pilot has encouraged other connections to be forged between the Drama and Music departments of the School as a whole.

Music Therapy Provision The Guildhall School, one of the country’s leading providers of music therapy training, is aiming to use its expertise in the field to deliver a clinical service to patients in the neighbouring community at the St. Luke’s Centre, Islington. In 2008, research was undertaken between the School and the east London Mental Health Trust, involving registered patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) who had not responded to other treatments. Using a randomised controlled trial design, the study measured whether music therapy had an effect on PTSD symptoms. Results showed a significant reduction in symptoms after music therapy and indicated that patients viewed music therapy as both positive and helpful.

Publications Recent publications

Music and the Mind: Essays in honour of John Sloboda, edited by Irène Deliège and Jane W. Davidson, Oxford University Press, 2011.

Working Together: an enquiry into creative collaborative learning across the Barbican-Guildhall Campus, Peter Renshaw, September 2011.

Researching Conservatoires: Enquiry, innovation and the development of Artistic Practice in Higher Music Education, Polifonia Research Working Group, 2010.

Handbook of Music and Emotion, edited by Patrik Juslin and John Sloboda, Oxford University Press, 2009.

Forthcoming publications

Reflections: The Piano Music of Maurice Ravel, Paul Roberts, Amadeus

Press, Spring 2012.

Preparing for success: a practical guide for young musicians, co-authored by Susan Hallam and Helena Gaunt, Institute of education Press, Spring 2012. Group Music Therapy: A Group Analytic Approach, co-authored by Alison Davies, eleanor Richards & Nick Barwick, Routledge, late 2012.

Collaborative Learning in Higher Music Education: what, why and how? edited by Helena Gaunt and Heidi Westerlund, Ashgate Publishing, late 2012. A Companion to Schubert Song, Graham Johnson, Yale University Press, April 2013.

Research GrantsCreativeworks London

One of four multi-million pound AHRC funded ‘Knowledge exchange Hubs for the Creative economy’ in the UK directed by Professor evelyn Welch, Queen Mary, University of London. The Guildhall School will lead the Capturing London’s Audiences strand.

www.qmul.ac.uk

Shift

An action research initiative led by the Barbican Centre and Guildhall School.

Theatrum Mundi: Making Urban Culture

A programme which unites several of the world’s leading cultural and academic institutions, exploring how cultural practices can give new life to cities throughout the world.

Creative learning and ‘original’ music performance

Directed by Professor John Rink, Cambridge University, as part of the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (CMPCP). www.cmpcp.ac.uk

What else is new?Guildhall School launches distinctive doctoral programme

Building on the existing DMus in Composition, a new practice-based doctorate, DMus/PhD, was launched in 2011. This opens the space for practitioners in music and drama to bring their perspectives as artists to research enquiry. The programme allows for research not only into ‘the object’, but also for research into and through the processes by which creative work and performance are made. It acknowledges that artists have the capacity to explore and illuminate complex theoretical issues that can have broad significance and implications.

Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (CMPCP)

Centre for Orchestra

École des écoles

European Association of Conservatoires (AEC)

Innovative Conservatoire (ICON)

Institute of Education, University of London

Institute of Musical Research (IMR)

London Sinfonietta

Pentacon

The Culture Capital Exchange (TCCE)

The Guildhall School is

provided by the City of

London as part

of its contribution

to the cultural life of

London and the nation

Partnerships

People for details of research active staff visit www.gsmd.ac.uk/research

Contact: research@gsmd.ac.uk

Guildhall School of Music & DramaSilk StreetBarbicanLondon eC2Y 8DT

www.gsmd.ac.uk/research

Innovative ConservatoireThis international collaboration involving over 22 conservatoires world-wide uses action research to address the challenges of development at the heart of conservatoire education, and to position creative and performing artists’ practice more centrally within the global knowledge economy.

École des écolesA network of ten european theatre schools which focuses on sharing knowledge and best practice, artistic and pedagogical development, teacher exchanges and developing joint activities.

PentaconThis five million euro, five institution international collaboration initiated by the Queensland Conservatorium aims to address a number of contemporary issues in higher music education.