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Project

Perceptions of a Traditional Instrument in a Globalized World: the Highland Bagpipe and Contemporary Art Music. A Music-Analytical and Cultural Inquiry.

While the Great Highland bagpipe is normally associated with Scotland and its traditional music, the instrument has, from the nineteen-seventies onwards, enjoyed an increasing use in classical music. A varied repertoire comprising a range of musical styles and instrumental approaches has emerged, awaiting, however, an indepth analysis. The proposed research project will fill this gap, studying how musical and cultural associations tied to the instrument potentially change in contemporary music. The musical associations will be conceptualised in the theme of hybridity, the cultural associations in identity and alterity. The project will firstly analyse which hybrid musical forms have emerged by using the instrument and its tradition in contemporary classical music. Secondly, it will elucidate composers’ and performers’ various approaches to the construction and evocation of identity and alterity. The project will focus on 6 case studies (2 per theme), approaching them from a double analytical perspective: a musical one on the one hand, a cultural one on the other. Methods and insights from musicology and ethnomusicology will be combined in the musical analysis, studying an amalgam of source materials (e.g. scores, sketches, videos). The cultural perspective will draw on concepts provided by ethnomusicology and postcolonial studies. By combining musicology, ethnomusicology and postcolonial studies, the project will create a synergy between these disciplines.
 

Date:1 Nov 2019 →  1 Nov 2023
Keywords:Music, ethnomusicology, Great Highland bagpipe, Scottishness, hybridity
Disciplines:Musicology and ethnomusicology
Project type:PhD project