On the fragility of sounds

On the fragility of sounds is a project designed to explore terrains of composition and contemporary music theatre as they are interwoven with feminist practice. In order to do so, this study takes the composers perspective and looks at the compositional process. Can music theatre be conceived and composed with another ear? We propose that taking a feminist position impacts ones listening per- ception: activating the feminist ear, hidden sonorities and more fragile sounds emerge. Listening to the background noises of human society brings them to the foreground of ones awareness. Rather than producing feminist works in terms of content, this project aims to understand how the artistic process is affected by feminist listening. The compositional process in music theatre begins within the composers imagination. From here, it expands, continuously integrating more artists, collaborators, and performers. Additional media may be present, from any number of contextualising disciplines. The process only comes to completion upon the works realisation and reception. As individuals, the members of the audience recreate the composition in their own creative process of listening. Looking at this cycle of activities as a model structure, our project investigates the influence of the feminist practice on the process of composing. In order to evaluate our proposals, this project will realise a number of scenic and spatial composi- tions in various formats, including a large-scale music theatre work and a minimalist lecture opera. In doing so, we will collaborate with the renowned soprano Juliet Fraser, the choreographer and per- former Paola Bianchi, with musicians of the ensembles PHACE and Schallfeld, with the festival Wien Modern, as well as with further international composer-performers, including the electronic composer Electric Indigo aka Susanne Kirchmayr and the pianist and composer Elisabeth Harnik. The research team is led by the composer-researcher Pia Palme. She will be assisted by the musicolo- gist Christina Lessiak, who plans her doctoral thesis as part of this project. Pia Palme will guide her reflection along the format of an auto-ethnography; this approach allows her to precisely and openly reflect on the artistic interactions within this exploration. Researcher Christine Lessiak will concen- trate her studies on the potential of (auto-)ethnographic ideas in the context of artistic and feminist research. In addition to the core team, three guest composers will contribute to the project, as they will be invited to realise scenic works for ensemble. We will strengthen our explorations through an inter- national exchange and a symposium and festival. The outcome of this interdisciplinary research will be disseminated through an array of performances, in festivals, lectures, presentations, scholarly pub- lications, workshops, as well as via the radio station Ö1 and the internet.

'On the fragility of sounds' was an art-based research project designed to explore terrains of composition and contemporary music theatre as they interact with feminist practices. Artistic researcher Pia Palme conducted the project alongside her compositional process, assisted by musicologist and feminism and gender studies researcher Christina Fischer-Lessiak. During the last phase, theatre and performance scholar Irene Lehmann completed the team for studies and publications. Can music theatre be conceived with 'Another Ear'? To evaluate this proposal, we commissioned works by Susanne Kirchmayr a.k.a. Electric Indigo, Elisabeth Schimana, Séverine Ballon and Elaine Mitchener as case studies. Palme also realised an array of scenic works and performances. For the music theatre WECHSELWIRKUNG, she established a collaborative group of five artists/researchers who were responsible for the development of the work. Choreographer Paola Bianchi, soprano Juliet Fraser, dramaturge Lehmann, Fischer-Lessiak and Palme met for three group research periods. The durational process accommodated parallel and collaborative artistic processes. The work was premiered in cooperation with the ensemble PHACE during the festival Wien Modern 2020, without an audience because of the pandemic regulations. A film of the performance by Michaela Schwentner was presented online. The theme 'fragility' was also investigated through the process of these case studies. Specifically, we located systemic conceptions as part of women*'s compositional practice and noticed a paradigm shift: feminist conceptions often intersect with ecological world views. Together they can influence decision-making and thus infiltrate the process of listening as well as the compositional process. Composing with 'Another Ear' brings about a structural change which impacts the entire field, including the very content, aesthetics, and conceptions of music. We identified a network of structures and interrelations, a mycelium of art-with-knowledge, and put forward the idea that understanding this network and becoming familiar with it can increase the ability to take action in art and research. In 2021, the team organised the weekly online 'Fragility of Sounds Lecture Series', which attracted highly engaged audiences and increased the overall outreach of our discussions. Compositions were premiered within this community. Part of the music was published on the 'Fragility of Sounds Album' (bandcamp) with Ventil Records. The lecture series became the foundation of the book 'Sounding Fragilities. An Anthology' published by Lehmann and Palme in 2022. It takes living, active composers to conduct research into their own processes, and female* artists today have a historic opportunity to re-shape the disciplines of composition and music. The high number of female* artists involved in this project contributed towards more inclusivity in contemporary music. Our work was disseminated through performances, lectures, presentations and workshops, via radio OE1 and the internet and gained international recognition, bringing more diversity into the discourse around composition and artistic research.