Contemporary notions of musical virtuosity redevelop historic concepts and demonstrate that our present understanding of virtuosity in western art music has shifted from what seemed, for a time, to be a relatively clear and stable definition. In the field and the academy, lively debates around the definition and/or value of virtuosity have always elicited strong and varied ideas. In the twenty-first century, frictions have emerged between traditional definitions of virtuosity and contemporary practices that emphasise collaboration and blur roles between performers, composers, and improvisers. Contemporary Musical Virtuosities embraces the evolving processes, practitioners, and presentation models within twenty-first century art music.
This edited collection explores recent insights into the experience and role of virtuosity in different contexts, via contributions from an intergenerational group of artists, academics, and artist-academics. Their writing highlights current themes in contemporary western art music and intersecting musical and performing arts genres such as dance, sound art, improvisation, jazz, trans-traditional collaborations, and Australian Indigenous music. It offers models for supporting and recognising a plurality of musical virtuosities typically excluded from traditional definitions and examines implications for musical practice today. Chapters take the form of academic essays, artist reflections, interviews, personal letters, and a manifesto, reflecting the range of approaches and contexts covered.
The collection includes first writings on practices that have been present in the industry for some time not yet documented or examined in detail until now, and thus offers a vision for the future that prioritises inclusive and overlapping practices and processes in music.
Louise Devenish is a contemporary percussionist whose creative practice blends performance, collaboration and artistic research. She is a Senior Research Fellow and Percussion Coordinator at Monash University, where she is undertaking an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award in artistic research, developing performance works with collaborators across music, visual arts, digital arts, and design. Additional projects include ARC Special Research Initiative on gender diversity in Australian jazz and improvisation, and ongoing artistic research in animated notation (Decibel New Music) and contemporary music performance (The Sound Collectors Lab). Her writing on music performance, Australian music, and notation is published in Contemporary Music Review, Tempo, Musicology Australia, Music & Practice, and Percussive Notes, and the monograph Global Percussion Innovations: The Australian Perspective. Her creative work has been acknowledged by awards and grants including a Churchill Fellowship.
Cat Hope is an artist scholar whose research interests include animated notation, gender and music, Australian music, digital archiving, as well as music composition and performance as artistic research. She is currently a Professor of Music at the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance at Monash University in Melbourne. She is the vice-president of the Australian Council of Deans and Directors of Creative Arts (DDCA) and a reviewer for a number of journals and conferences. She was a member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts, on the Humanities and Creative Arts panel (2016-2019).
