Conference participants includes Dr. Arnulf Mattes, Professor for Musicology, Director, Grieg Research Center, University of Bergen, Dr. Alexander van der Haven, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Bergen, Dr. Gunnar Hindrichs, Professor of Philosophy, University of Basel, Dr. Grit Schwarzkopf, University of Bergen, Dániel Péter Biró, Professor for Composition, Grieg Academy, Dr. Marta Gentilucci, Assistant Professor in Composition, Cambridge University, Dr. Peter van Kranenburg, Lecturer, Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University, Juan Vassallo, PhD Fellow, Grieg Academy, Sergej Tchirkov, PhD Fellow, Grieg Academy, Örjan Sandred, Professor for Composition, University of Manitoba, Dr. Ermis Theodorakis, Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Leipzig, Dr. Hagit Yakira, Associate Professor for Dance, University of Stavanger, Dr. Tijs Ham and soprano Juliane Harberg.
After the conference, a concert will be presented by Ermis Theodorakis, piano Juliane Harberg, soprano, Sergej Tchirkov, accordion and Dániel Péter Biró, guitar and students and alumni of the Grieg Academy with works by Julia Constance Wiger-Nordås, Anton Webern, Ethel Mary Smyth, Ermis Theodorakis, Örjan Sandred, Alfred Zimmerlin and Iannis Xenakis.
PROGRAM
Session 1: Intuition in Computational Music Research and Religious Studies
Gunnar Sævings Sal, Grieg Academy
Chair: Sergej Tchirkov
10:00
Greeting by Jostein Gundersen, Vice-Dean of Research, KMD
Dániel Péter Biró: Conference Introduction: Intuition in Artistic, Philosophical and Scientific Research
In this introductory talk, Dániel Péter Biró will discuss how various concepts of intuition from various historical periods and cultural sources inform our understanding of how intuition plays a role in artistic, philosophical and scientific research today. He will go on to ask how intuition might help us to understand how various types of thinking and research might be combined in a holistic manner.
10:15
Juan Vassallo: Outward Threads – Computation and Intuition in Contemporary Music Composition
'Outward Threads' delves into contemporary music creation employing computer-assisted composition, algorithmic poetry, and electroacoustic mediums. It challenges the perception of technology-based composition as alienating and fully deterministic while reevaluating intuition as a logical-associative cognitive process. The project explores the interplay between computation and intuition, enhancing artistic expression through their dialogical synergy.
11:00
Peter van Kranenburg: On Computational Modelling of Melody
Over the last decades, the study of computing resulted in a body of knowledge and practices concerning algorithms and data structures. These methods are generally abstract, in the sense that particular datastructures or algorithms may find application in a diversity of concrete fields. E.g., a graph can be used to represent such diverse phenomena as social networks, the layout of components on a circuit board, physical road maps for navigation, relations between traditions in Medieval liturgical chant, or the architecture of neurons in an artificial neural network. In this talk, I will discuss the possibilities of computational methods for the study of music, with a particular focus on the proces of modelling. Some examples from the field of modelling melody will be presented, in particular about the analysis and understanding of melodic similarity and of tonal structures in religious recitation.
11:45
Alexander van der Haven: Neither Jews nor Muslims: The Hymns of the Turkish ma’aminim, last of the Sabbatians
The Turkish Ma’aminim, or Dönmes as they are best known, are descendants of Jews who followed their messiah Sabbatai Tsevi into Islam in the late seventeenth century. On the basis of a recording of a (reconstructed) nineteenth-century ma’aminim hymn, which will be presented, the lecture will show how the ma’aminim, despite outside perspectives of them being crypto-Jews or wayward Jews, have developed an independent religious tradition that is neither, and both, Islamic and Jewish.
12:30
Lunch Served in Gunnar Sævings Sal
Session 2: Intuition of Body and Space
Studio A, Grieg Academy
Chair: Karen Werner
13:30
Marta Gentilucci: Encounter, exchange and inspiration: Cartographies du corps
Cartographies du corps is a sound-visual installation, and is the result of a creative collaboration between the composer Marta Gentilucci and the photographer Susan Meiselas.
14:15
Coffee Break in Gunnar Sævings sal
Session 3: Intuition In Philosophical and Musical Form
Gunnar Sævings sal, Grieg Academy
Chair: Arnulf Mattes
14:30
Gunnar Hindrichs: (1) Intuitive Understanding of the Whole (Spinoza - Kant - Schelling)
Grasping the whole needs a specific mode of knowledge. Often, the concept of intuition is employed for its definition. The presentation gives a sketch of three important versions of the intuition of a whole: Spinoza's scientia intuitiva, Kant's intuitive understanding, and Schelling's intellectual intuition.
Anton Webern
Variations Op. 27 (1936)
for piano solo, Ermis Theodorakis
(2) Intuitive Power of Judgment and the Unity of Form: Goethe and the Schoenberg Circle
Goethe used the term "intuitive power of judgment" in order to define our cognition of natural metamorphoses. His idea had some influence on the Schoenberg circle and its search for an adequate theory of musical form. The presentation introduces Goethe's idea and draws lines to Schoenberg's "Musikalischer Gedanke" and Erwin Ratz' analysis of form.
15:00
Grit Schwarzkopf: (1) Euclid and Hilbert
Axioms are the foundations of science. Scientific theories are formulated on their basis. In 325 BC, Euclid explained this relationship in Stocheia (The Elements). In 1917 Hilbert expounded on this relationship and postulated that the axiomatic method be used for scientific work. Axioms cannot be justified, as they are intuitively positioned.
Musical Response:
Anton Webern:
Five Songs after poems by Stefan George Op. 4 (1908-09)
Juliane Harberg, mezzo soprano
Ermis Theodorakis, piano
(2) What is intuition?
The question of what intuition actually serves to evokes a variety of positions. Intuition has to do with thinking: as immediate understanding or as a sudden access to the whole or as a counterpart to rational, discursive thinking. What if we understood intuition as the only form of thinking?
15:45
Coffee Break in Gunnar Sævings sal
Session 4: Intuition in Composition and Performance
Gunnar Sævings Sal, Grieg Academy
Chair: Erik Håkon Halvorsen
16:00
Örjan Sandred/Dániel Péter Biró: Intuition in Programming, Composition and Performance in Cracks and Corrosion (2004/2017)
In this discussion, Örjan Sandred and Dániel Péter Biró will discuss the role of intuition in programming, pre-compositional planning using computer aided composition (CAC), and performing with a discursive electroacoustic setup.
Respondent: Hagit Yakira
16:45
Sergej Tchirkov: Three movements from “Akkordeonbuch” (2020-2022), Alfred Zimmerlin (*1965)
In this presentation Sergej Tchirkov will play some fragments from Akkordeonbuch – a large-scale composition by Alfred Zimmerlin. A specific focus of the discussion will be put on the role of the body as one of the central aspects in the production process and how it relates to intuitive performance.
Respondent: Tijs Ham
17:30
Conference Dinner