An Instrumental Unlocking with Performer as Innovator: the oboe as protagonist in re-thinking the relationships between Performance, Improvisation, and Composition

Maxwell, Melinda (2024) An Instrumental Unlocking with Performer as Innovator: the oboe as protagonist in re-thinking the relationships between Performance, Improvisation, and Composition. Doctoral thesis, Birmingham City University.

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Abstract

In the older cultures of Asia, the Middle and Far East the sound of the modern oboe’s ancestors was expressively powerful, and improvisation was a fundamental component in performance. In Western classical music improvising and performing composer instrumentalists was also common, but from the 18th century these skills began to drift apart. The skill of improvising in performance is now mostly a lost art and a performer composing is unusual. Today the combined skills of improvising, performing, and composing have become compartmentalized into separate activities in our systems of delivery in classical mainstream music making and in education. In the splitting of these musical activities, I believe we have neglected something significant. And a context in which oboists from the contemporary Western classical tradition improvise their own music in concert and compose from this experience, are rare.

This commentary draws on practice-led methodology that connects these skills to explore the sound and creative potential of the oboe by a classically trained professional oboist. My research question is: how can the modern oboe re-connect with its past to find a character in its sound that fuses old and new sonorities, and what potential does this offer for the development of a new improvisatory and compositional language within a contemporary classical context? To begin, there will be three chapters on background context, including one on methodology. This is followed by a series of six case studies and a final commentary on a new work. The case studies will examine methods that reinvent ways of hearing the instrument, explore the music of its different historical roots, and attempt to reconfigure the oboe’s place in a 21st century context. This practice-led submission explores perceptions of oboe character through creative practice, and places improvisation at the heart of composition and performance, reclaiming a vital part of music making that fuses player, improviser, and composer. Through collaboration and the reworking of established repertoire, I aim to make a contemporary music where the oboe amalgamates its older voice with a new one, where the discipline of improvising feeds into composing, and where performing and live music making can generate different perceptions of oboe character.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Dates:	Date Event August 2023 Submitted March 2024 Accepted
Uncontrolled Keywords:	oboe, improvisation, composition, performance
Subjects:	CAH25 - design, and creative and performing arts > CAH25-02 - performing arts > CAH25-02-02 - music
Divisions:	Doctoral Research College > Doctoral Theses Collection Faculty of Arts, Design and Media > Royal Birmingham Conservatoire > Royal Birmingham Conservatoire - Music
Depositing User:	Jaycie Carter
Date Deposited:	11 Sep 2024 09:30
Last Modified:	11 Sep 2024 09:30
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/15825

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