Dr. Paul Craenen

Yesterday afternoon, at 4.15pm, Leiden University and docARTES saw Flemish composer Paul Craenen defend his research to become Doctor in the Arts.

The subject concerned “composed performers” and applied the perspective of the composer to investigate the body in musical performance. The remarkably well-written dissertation (download here - buy the English publication here) looks at this topic from a thoroughly thought-out set of angles, including the body of the composer himself, the relation between performing bodies and instruments, technology and space (physically sounding and mentally perceived) and embodiment of silence as well as non-linearity. More than showing how his insights influenced his compositional practice, the dissertation gives a very detailed and in-depth account of the status of this subject in recent history. The relation with his own, extremely creative work was revealed in the concert and lecture that preceded the day of the promotion. 

P. Craenen: Dubbel Gaan (2007-08)

The value of the research goes beyond showing how Dr. Craenen thinks about the bodies for which he composes music. Besides working out a complete set of concepts to frame his line of thought (including new meaning given to Lachenmann’s “musique concrète instrumentale”), this research is important as it details the reflections of an artistic practitioner on the trendy topic of embodiment. All too often, issues of embodiment are considered from a neutralizing distance that renders the research outcome theoretical rather than effective. Amongst other, his approach shows - once more but with compellingly novel evidence - why performances must be experienced live and visually. More to the point of artistic research yet, some of the conclusions indicate precisely how the old dichotomy between reproductive performers and innovative composers is out of date when compared to the musical potential that the bodily parameter, well… embodies. 

P. Craenen: Tubes (2007)

Dr. Jed Wentz

We have a new Doctor in the Arts! Yesterday, traverso player and conductor Jed Wentz promoted at Leiden University on his research into The Relationship between Gesture, Affect and Rhythmic Freedom in the Performance of French Tragic Opera from Lully to Rameau. The dissertation is available on-line here – more info on Jed here.

Jed Wentz

As part of his defense, Jed presented a well-attended and -received concert at the Conservatory of Amsterdam with a program containing chamber music by Telemann and Blavet, and monologues from Luly's Armide as well as texts by Shakespeare and Bary. Other performers included Musica ad Rhenum with a.o. baroque dancer Jennifer Thorp and soprano Andréanne Brisson Paquin.

The concert was a delight, enabling the audience to enjoy ingenious and intriguing links between non-musical aspects of period stage craft (such as facial expressions and bodily gestures) and rhythmic freedom in the performance of the music itself. Jed has examined historical sources that treat acting and rhetorics in order to attempt at recreating a language of gesture suitable for experimentation in operatic scenes from the genre. As a flautist, he went as far as learning to master Gilbert Austin's gesture notation to perform Shakespeare's Speech of Brutus on the Death of Caesar (see the illustration at the top of this post), studying the Beauchamps-Feuillet dance notation, even consulting medical sources to understand the broader context of affect and the body within which gesture and musical performance were situated.

Jed's research proposes that the performances at the Paris opera were far from static representations of the notes on the page, but rather an exciting synthesis of word, music and gesture that strongly stirred the hearts of the listeners. By way of his own performances, Jed achieved exactly that: the meticulousness with which specific types of physical expression were linked to the meaning of a text had clearly demonstrable artistic merit and was inspiring to witness.

Jed is the second Doctor in the Arts from Leiden University and the docARTES program. Welcome to the club, buddy!