Extended Composition: What Can Music Be?

Schedule

11.00-12.00: Lecture by Paul Craenen

12.00-12.30: Videoconference with Jennifer Walshe and Matthew Shlomowitz.

12.45: Presentation of the Extended Composition project by Tanja Orning, Camilla Eeg-Tverrbakk, Christian Blom, Ellen Ugelvik and Henrik Hellstenius 

14.00-16.00: Panel discussion lead by Tora Ferner Lange, with Shila Anaraki, Annesley Black, Andreas Borreagaard, Tanja Orning, Christian Blom and Henrik Hellstenius 

New music is increasingly incorporating new material that is neither sound or musical instruments. Movement, video, text, space, light, objects and leakages from real life are all making deeper inroads into modern composition and contemporary music performance practice.

This seminar will reflect on questions connected to such new strategies and how they can develop. How to master the rich possibilities and challenges that arise in the face of music’s expanding parameters?

Which kinds of new meaning emerge from extended composition’s layers of sound, speech, lighting, movements, language, objects and images? 

Does this ‘new’ material change what music means? Is it even appropriate to think of such hybrids as musical compositions? How should be respond to such works and how can we evaluate them? 

The seminar comes out of the artistic research project Extended Composition at Norges Musikkhøgskole.

The project has been running since 2018, and the seminar is connected to the Extended Composition concert at Sentralen on 22 September.