Musikvidenskab: Musikvidenskabeligt emne med performance og produktion: Emne 1: Body & Composition

A musical performance with instruments is usually performed through the bodies of the performers. 

These performers are usually humanoid, with two legs, two hands, a strong respiratory organ and extended extremities. For them, this is actually a rather challenging, sometimes annoying, even painful, but often quite joyful, even ecstatic, social and complex activity. Not every performer is actually physiologically capable of performing or even excelling at any given level of performance.

In this course we will explore all the strange and surprising, fascinating and tedious aspects of making music and sound with our bodies.

Together we will face the challenges of gendered instrumentalists' bodies, instruments that seem to be made only for some strange standard or non-standard type of body, compositions that require certain physical skills, and performances that rely on other physical qualities that some of us have - but other bodies do not.

The course is therefore an introduction to the history and theory of music and sonic art as an exploration of the body as a site for composition, for performance - in all its limitations and surprising possibilities. 

The exam in this course will consist of a sound or music performance or composition by you, in which you will attempt to answer a short research question related to bodies and musical composition - through your musical performance or production. 

Therefore, all your love and obsession, your knowledge or ignorance, your disgust or hatred of certain instruments and their instrumental practices will be the material with which we will work.