Browsing by Author "Pauw, Esther Marie"

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    Curating South African flute compositions : landscape as theme of exhibition
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2015-12) Pauw, Esther Marie; Muller, Stephanus; Matei, Corvin; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Department of Music.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study explores intersections between curatorship, South African flute compositions in concert practice and ‘landscape’ as theme of exhibition for concert events. The investigation into these intersections is informed by artistic research, an approach that is relatively new for South African research in music. This type of transformative research, similar in some ways to action research, embraces the performative integration of multi-directional processes of theoretical work, reflection and the performance of music towards generating knowledges. Methodologies therefore include theoretical research, reflection, meta-reflection and self-reflection, as well as performance itself, processes that, at times, happen concurrently, or chronologically, or in other integrated ways. Outcomes include the formulation of knowledges into a discursive mode that is written up in the format of a dissertation. Online internet-based links to the videos of the three events accompany this dissertation. These written and videographed documents attest to the notion of the concert as site of research (rather than merely a site of repertoire and skill display), amongst others, and remind that curated concert events and their worded reflections (that now exist, traceably) are artwork texts themselves, thereby indicating the complex processes that occur when artistic product transforms into artistic argument. This project views the notion of themed presentation as one of the means that curatorship practices offer to direct museological and visual arts exhibitions. The research contends that curating as theoretical framework, but also as interventionist practice that is context-sensitive, is able to inform and invigorate conventional concert practices in the exhibition of South African flute compositions. In a first phase of the research I investigate how South African flute music compositions have been curated by flautists who have engaged with this body of music over the past three decades. In a second phase I act as flautist-curator to curate three concerts that feature a selection of this body of compositions, using the theme of landscape as central emphasis. Three of the chapters of this dissertation serve to document the design, presentation of and reflection on these curations. In the process I am compelled to ask whether and how the theme of landscape influences my concert practice, as I am aware that the topic of landscape – and land – constitutes ongoing moments of national crisis. The landscape-centred curations, each in turn, take me to a critical engagement with the romantic landscape paintings of artist J.H. Pierneef; to the insecure, unstable and risk-laden ‘smooth space’ of Johannesburg city, and also to the recognition and embracing of a sub-altern voice that sounds decoloniality as a radical tool towards social transformation. In these curations I play the flute, an instrument that is traditionally and mythologically associated with the pastoral, but through my concert curations I perhaps find ‘An Other Tongue’, as Walter Mignolo suggests decolonial aestheSis is able to instigate. This research project demonstrates the power of the flute and its Western scored notations to intervene, transform and be transformed locally amidst curations that are context sensitive. Ultimately, the research is concerned with the possibilities presented by artistic research.
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    Density 21.5 by Edgard Varese : a case study of the value of semiology in music analysis
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 1996-12) Pauw, Esther Marie; Ludemann, Winfried ; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Music.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study attempts to determine the value of semiological analysis as understood and applied by Jean-Jacques Nattiez, in his analysis of Density 21.5 by Edgard Varèse. The initial aim is to determine whether semiology, understood to be the study of signs, can be of value in the analysis of the diversity of styles and compositions which have been composed throughout the twentieth century. The initial hypothesis suggests that the strengths of Nattiez's semiological approach are to be found in his thorough and rigorous analysis, which result from his dedication to taxonomic distributional methods of analysis. The weakness of his approach, however, is that he fails to demonstrate processes of signification or meaning in music, an aspect which musical semiology (particularly of the semantic type) attempts to address. The findings of this study are, firstly, that semiology is applicable to (any) musical analysis, including the analysis of twentieth century styles. Secondly, it is found that Nattiez's approach to semiology (particularly before 1990) represents a narrow, almost neo-positivistic methodology. where analysis is performed thoroughly and in a quasi-scientific manner. but where concepts such as "the sign" and "meaning" in music are barely addressed. This calls the semiological value of his analysis into question. A valuable contribution by Nattiez, however, is to be found in his formulation of the "tripartition". where analysis can be performed and categorised according to any level (and all three levels) of the tripartition, namely the "neutral" level the "poietic" level and the "esthesic" level. Such a model allows for the clarification of analytical procedures. The final chapter presents two opposing points of view concerning the issue of meaning in music: that of the so-called empiricists (like Nattiez) who, despite adhering to a semiological approach, prefer to avoid issues of meaning and signification, as opposed to the semanticists who view musical semiology as being analogous to the search for meaning in music.