A pioneering research centre studying live musical performance as creative practice launches in the Faculty of Music in October with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
A pioneering research centre studying live musical performance as creative practice launches in the Faculty of Music in October with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
The five-year AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice (CMPCP) will address key questions about how musical performances take shape over time, how knowledge is transformed into practice in performance, and how understanding this creative practice varies across different traditions and cultures.
‘Scholarly interest in musical performance has practically exploded during the last 20 years,’ said Centre Director Professor John Rink. ‘Whereas musicologists once understood music primarily in terms of notated texts, the experience of music in sound and through time, as well as the creative processes behind it, now inform research of the highest quality and urgency. Performance studies are at the top of the international research agenda – one which CMPCP will shape for years to come.’
A grant of £1.7 million from the AHRC has provided ‘Phase 2’ funding to establish the Centre in Cambridge in partnership with King’s College London, the University of Oxford and Royal Holloway, University of London, and in association with the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the Royal College of Music. CMPCP will build on the achievements of its predecessor, the AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM), which focused on musical recordings and was based at Royal Holloway.
Cambridge’s contribution to the Centre will be spearheaded by Professor Rink, who will lead a project on creative learning and ‘original’ performance, and Professor Nick Cook, who is investigating music as creative practice. Professor Cook, who previously directed CHARM, was elected last year to the University of Cambridge’s 1684 Chair of Music.
Cambridge is well placed to host CMPCP thanks to its outstanding performance environment. But as Professor Cook explained, its strengths as host institution go even further: ‘Because music is a central feature of everyday life, its scope extends beyond the arts and humanities into the social and even the hard sciences. Cambridge’s pre-eminence in all these areas, coupled with the possibility of creating working relationships between researchers in different disciplines, make it an ideal location to develop a musicology for the 21st century.’
For more information, please contact Professor John Rink (jsr50@cam.ac.uk) or visit www.cmpcp.ac.uk/
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