Song, Stage and Screen VIII:

‘What We Do When We Do What We Do: Process and Performance in Musical Theatre’

Central School of Speech and Drama

University of London

2-4 July 2013

Assi Karttunen DMus, Sibelius Academy, Finland

Experiences of coaching in the Rameau´s Les Indes Galantes -workshop


In my artistic research project I study rhetorical actio (voice, gesture, movement and mien) in the living body of the present-day performer. The project started in August 2011 as a collaboration of two musician-researchers; DMus Päivi Järviö, mezzo soprano and DMus Assi Karttunen, harpsichordist. The project includes concerts, workshops, rehearsals, video recordings, experiments and demonstrations as well as articles describing the working processes. Thus the approach could be called embodied study of historical performing practices.

The study of movement related to music is one of the key areas of modern music research. Music perceived as sound and movement brings forth the musician ́s bodily way of reading the score. In my paper I am focusing on verbalizing my experiences of coaching in the Rameau´s Les Indes Galantes -workshop at the Sibelius Academy the 10th to 14th December 2012 as a part of our research project. Which rhetorical tools seemed to help the singer and the basso continuo player in their tasks? What kind of rehearsals and learning strategies were the most useful in this process? How the conceiving of the actio embedded in the composed libretto helped the singer and the basso continuo player to embody the music in a more communicating way? As one of the project´s results I will discuss the historically informed musician´s relationship to the music performed and thus join the ongoing discussions on the embodiment of so called early music.

Keywords: HIP, gesture, rhetoric, embodiment.

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