Sholl, Robert (2022) Artistic practice as Embodied Learning: Reconnecting Pedagogy, Improvisation, and Composition. In: Rethinking the Teaching of Music Performance in Higher Level Institutions. Open Book Press. (In Press)

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

In Rethinking the Teaching of Music Performance in Higher Level Institutions, ed. Jorge Salgado Correia, Gilvano Dalagna, Helen Julia Minors, and Stefan Östersjö (ERASMUS funded project: https://react.web.ua.pt

This article addresses pedagogy, improvisation, and composition as artistic research through Bach's Goldberg Variations (1741). This article develops a critical and reflexive method to connect these areas. It begins by presenting a creative rethinking of species counterpoint, a foundation for thinking in Schenkerian analysis, through the Goldbergs. I present a layered-cake of musical lines against the figured bass of the theme (moving from semibreves to quavers) as an exercise that inculcates various aspects of var. 1 of the ‘Goldbergs’, and then I explore the codes and ramifications of this that allow both historical sensitivity and creative development. This contextualized exercise provides a stepping-stone to a discussion of Variation 1 (prefigured in my species example), and the development of complete variations beginning with a given “invention” (Dreyfus 1997), and then moving to the composition of new ideas. I suggest how these exercises can be used for teaching improvisation and show how this invaluable connection can be developed through other models (‘la folia’ for example). This model of thinking is historically connected to partimenti (Gjerdingen 2010, 2020), and, following Feldenkrais’s thinking (Sholl 2019, 2021), I provide different solutions to the same exercises. This strategy attempts to promote an “adaptive flexibility” (Thelen and Smith 2004) in which students can enactively and organically learn musical and technical fluency, while also developing their creativity and autonomy.

Item Type:	Book Section
Subjects:	Music
Depositing User:	Robert Sholl
Date Deposited:	11 Dec 2023 14:42
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2023 14:42
URI:	https://repository.uwl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10552

Actions (login required)

View Item