Abstract
What does an instrument offer us, and how does playing it, change this? Oscillating between personal experiences and select theoretical positions, the author discusses relationships between instrument and performer. Through a questioning of the validity of subject/object positions, the dilemma of instrumentality is introduced and the relevance of transgression used as an entry to a rethinking of instrumentality.
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Notes
- 1.
STEIM SuperCollider workshop, oct 2002. See http://www.steim.nl and http://v2.nl/archive/people/joel-ryan.
- 2.
In my summary of Gibson’s view there are components (the object, its actions possibilities, an organism), all residing in an environment. A central tenet in ecological thinking is that any change to a component influences the entire eco-system. We shall later see how this relates to a performance-paradigm.
- 3.
And this doing, this act, has been targeted as an epistemological category by a long line of thinkers, from Wittgenstein to Merleau-Ponty, Bourdieu to Rheinberger. In recent musicology, Christopher Small’s concept of “musicking” targets this. Older sources includes Vladimir Jankelevitch, who stresses the ineffable aspect of music as a live event.
- 4.
‘Extended technique’ is the nomenclature used to describe any performance technique that goes beyond that of traditional performance practice. For the flute this normally includes various types of percussive techniques using keys and or lips, vocal techniques, multiphonics, timbral transformations, air sounds, noise spectra and microtonal intonation.
- 5.
Dick is but one of many flutists behind such publications: Bartolozzi (1967), Artaud (1980), Levine and Mitropoulos-Bott (2002).
- 6.
- 7.
One could argue that the inclusion of microphones to my practice constituted a fundamental change of my dispositif, to the extent that it was no longer ‘a flute’. I disagree with this position, as I see the use of microphones as a transformation of the auditory perspective applied to the instrument, rather than the invention of a new one.
- 8.
A technique that later proved valuable when performing works by Brian Ferneyhough.
- 9.
These experiences were fundamental to the later development of Modality, a process described elsewhere in this volume.
- 10.
See the interview “Working together. Roberto Fabbriciani in conversation with Bjørnar Habbestad” by this author in Music + Practice. To be published late 2016: http://www.musicandpractice.org.
- 11.
“Virtuosity—an interdisciplinary Symposium” held at the Liszt Academy, Budapest, 3–6 March 2016. See https://virtuosity2016.wordpress.com.
- 12.
Described thoroughly by Benjamin Piekut in 'Indeterminacy, Free Improvisation, and the Mixed Avant-Garde: Experimental Music in London, 1965–1975' (Piekut 2014), in Journal of the American Musicological Society Vol. 67, No. 3 (Fall 2014), pp. 769-824.
- 13.
Cr. the many NIME-instruments that are developed, performed at conferences, never to be seen again.
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Habbestad, B. (2017). No Flute Is an Island, Entire of Itself. Transgressing Performers, Instruments and Instrumentality in Contemporary Music. In: Bovermann, T., de Campo, A., Egermann, H., Hardjowirogo, SI., Weinzierl, S. (eds) Musical Instruments in the 21st Century. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2951-6_20
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