Kathleen Coessens

Embodied experience and sensorial understandings in Western music The Western history of aesthetics is characterised by tension between theory and practice. Musicians listen, play, and then listen more profoundly in order to play differently, adapt the body, and sense the environment. They become deeply involved in the sensorial qualities of music practice. Artistic practice refers to the original meaning of aesthetics—the senses. Whereas Baumgarten and Goethe explored the relationship between sensibility and reason, sensation and thinking, later philosophers of aesthetics deemed the sensorial to be confused and unreliable and instead prioritised a cognitive or objective approach. Written by authors from the fields of philosophy, composition, performance, and artistic practice, Sensorial Aesthetics in Music Practices repositions aesthetics as a domain of the sensible and explores the interaction between artists, life, and environment. Aesthetics becomes a field of sensorial and embodied experience involving temporal and spatial influences, implicit knowledge, and human characteristics. Contributors: Kathleen Coessens (Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel, Orpheus Institute), Tim Ingold (University of Aberdeen), Michaël Levinas (Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris), Fabien Lévy (Hochschule für Musik Detmold), Lasse Thoresen (Norwegian Academy of Music), Vanessa Tomlinson (Queensland Conservatorium of Music), Salomé Voegelin (University of the Arts London)

Sensorial Aesthetics in Music Practices

Darla Crispin

Dr. Anne Douglas

The Orpheus Institute has been providing postgraduate education for musicians since 1996 and introduced the first doctoral programme for music practitioners in Flanders (2004). Acting as an umbrella institution for Flanders, it is co-governed by the music and dramatic arts departments of all four Flemish Colleges, which are strongly involved in its operation. Throughout the Institutes various activities (workshops, master classes, seminars, interviews, and associated events) there is a clear focus on the development of a new research discipline in the arts: one that addresses questions and topics that are at the heart of musical practice, building on the unique expertise and perspectives of musicians and constantly dialoguing with more established research disciplines. Within this context, the Orpheus Institute launched an international Research Centre in 2007 that acts as a stable constituent within an ever growing field of enquiry. The Orpheus Research Centre in Music [ORCiM] is a place where musical artist can fruitfully conduct individual and collaborative research on issues that are of concern to all involved in artistic practice. The development of a discipline-specific discourse in the field of artistic research in music is the core mission of ORCiM. This Subseries of The Collected Writings of the Orpheus Institute, will explicitly 'zoom in' on studies that take artistic practice as their point of departure and deal with questions and challenges that arise from that practice. It is this kind of research, in all its variety, which the Orpheus Researhc Centre in Music promotes and which the Subseries is designed to present. The contributions within the Subseries extend the possibilities and understanding of musical practice and act as a springboard for future research in this young but fascinating area. The emergent field of artistic research remains controversial, and is accepted with varying degrees of enthusiasm in academic institutions. The challenges and opportunities presented by this discipline may be better understood by re-emphasising the centrality of the artist through a fresh paradigm-an 'artistic turn'. The aim is to create a field of meaning that may illuminate the most promising, though correspondingly problematic, aspects of artistic research; the essential ineffability of artistic creativity, and the consequent insufficiency of verbal and written accounts. The discourse articulated charts a constellation of ideas that outlines the new disciplines and points to its manifold and open-ended possibilities.

Kathleen Coessens

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