Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T08:25:16.807Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Remaking Classical Music: Cultures of Creativity in Pleasure Garden

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2019

JOSEPH BROWNING Open the ORCID record for JOSEPH BROWNING [Opens in a new window]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Taking its theoretical orientation from Sherry Ortner's distinction between ‘power’ and ‘projects’, this article considers the relationship between local artistic projects and the cultures in which they participate. I focus on Pleasure Garden, a collaborative project that spans site-specific installations, concerts and an album. Exploring a wide range of issues at stake in the creative process, including collaboration, gender, aesthetics, colonialism, the work concept, and commodification, I trace how Pleasure Garden’s creators variously reproduced and reworked dominant conventions, while at the same time pursuing their own distinctive commitments. Through this, I argue that Pleasure Garden’s creators negotiated a space that was inside, yet sometimes out of alignment with what I call the ‘cultures of creativity’ associated with Western art music, the music industries, late capitalism, and neoliberalism. This highlights both the powerful forces affecting musicians today and the possibilities for making things otherwise.

Type
Articles
Information
Twentieth-Century Music , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , February 2020 , pp. 23 - 61
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I am very grateful to the Pleasure Garden team, and Genevieve Lacey in particular, for their openness and generosity during and since my fieldwork on the project. I would also like to thank Chloë Alaghband-Zadeh, Jane W. Davidson, Samantha Dieckmann, Jenny McCallum, and Tom Western for helpful input at various stages, and the two anonymous reviewers for Twentieth-Century Music, alongside Pauline Fairclough (as editor), for invaluable guidance in bringing the article to fruition. This work was supported in part by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.

References

Bibliography

Ashby, Arved Mark. Absolute Music, Mechanical Reproduction. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Axelby, Richard. ‘Calcutta Botanic Garden and the Colonial Re-ordering of the Indian Environment’. Archives of Natural History 35/1 (2008), 150–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baber, Zaheer. ‘The Plants of Empire: Botanic Gardens, Colonial Power and Botanical Knowledge’. Journal of Contemporary Asia 46/4 (2016), 659–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Born, Georgina. ‘On Musical Mediation: Ontology, Technology and Creativity’. Twentieth-Century Music 2/1 (2005), 7–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Born, Georgina. ‘Introduction’, in Music, Sound and Space: Transformations of Public and Private Experience, ed. Born, Georgina. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 1–69.Google Scholar
Bronfman, Alejandra. ‘Sonic Colour Zones: Laura Boulton and the Hunt for Music’. Sound Studies 3/1 (2017), 17–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Browning, Joseph. ‘Meeting the Garden Halfway: Ethnographic Encounters with a Sound Installation Microculture’. Ethnomusicology (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Browning, Joseph. ‘Involving Experiences: Audiencing and Co-reception in Pleasure Garden’. Journal of the Royal Musical Association (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Bull, Anna. ‘Gendering the Middle Classes: The Construction of Conductors’ Authority in Youth Classical Music Groups’. The Sociological Review 64/4 (2016), 855–71.Google Scholar
Bull, Anna. Class, Control and Classical Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, David. ‘Musical Autonomy Revisited’, in The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction, ed. Clayton, Martin, Herbert, Trevor, and Middleton, Richard. New York: Routledge, 2012. 172–83.Google Scholar
Clarke, Eric F., Doffman, Mark, and Timmers, Renee. ‘Creativity, Collaboration and Development in Jeremy Thurlow's Ouija for Peter Sheppard Skærved’. Journal of the Royal Musical Association 141/1 (2016), 113–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, Eric F., Doffman, Mark, Gorton, David, and Östersjö, Stefan. ‘Fluid Practices, Solid Roles? The Evolution of Forlorn Hope’, in Distributed Creativity: Collaboration and Improvisation in Contemporary Music, ed. Clarke, Eric F. and Doffman, Mark. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. 116–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conlin, Jonathan, ed. The Pleasure Garden, from Vauxhall to Coney Island. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Cook, Nicholas. ‘Scripting Social Interaction: Improvisation, Performance, and Western “Art” Music’, in Improvisation and Social Aesthetics, ed. Born, Georgina, Lewis, Eric, and Straw, Will. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017. 59–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curkpatrick, Samuel. ‘Voices on the Wind: Eddies of Possibility for Australia's Orchestral Future’, in Global Perspectives on Orchestras: Collective Creativity and Social Agency, ed. Ramnarine, Tina K.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. 119–36.Google Scholar
Feld, Steven. ‘Pygmy POP. A Genealogy of Schizophonic Mimesis’. Yearbook for Traditional Music 28 (1996), 1–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ganti, Tejaswini. ‘Neoliberalism’. Annual Review of Anthropology 43/1 (2014), 89–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: Towards a New Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Goehr, Lydia. The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Daniel M. ‘Decolonialising “actually existing neoliberalism”’. Social Anthropology 20/3 (2012), 304–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Lucy. Music, Gender, Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gross, Jonathan. ‘Concert Going in Everyday Life: An Ethnography of Still and Silent Listening at the BBC Proms’. PhD diss., Birkbeck, University of London, 2013.Google Scholar
Hunter, Mary. ‘“To Play as if from the Soul of the Composer”: The Idea of the Performer in Early Romantic Aesthetics’. Journal of the American Musicological Society 58/2 (2005), 357–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Julian. Who Needs Classical Music? Cultural Choice and Musical Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kisliuk, Michelle. ‘Review of Bayaka: The Extraordinary Music of the Babenzélé Pygmies by Louis Sarno, Bernie Krause, Larry Charno’. Ethnomusicology 41/1 (1997), 171–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lacey, Genevieve. Interview with Andrew Ford, The Music Show, ABC Radio National, 11 August 2012.Google Scholar
Lacey, Genevieve. Liner notes to Pleasure Garden. CD, ABC Classics, ABC4812370, 2016.Google Scholar
León, Javier F., ed. Special issue on ‘Music, Music Making and Neoliberalism’. Culture, Theory and Critique 55/2 (2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Le Guin, Elizabeth. Boccherini's Body: An Essay in Carnal Musicology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levitz, Tamara. Modernist Mysteries: Perséphone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lynch, Tom. ‘“Nothing but land”: Women's Narratives, Gardens, and the Settler-Colonial Imaginary in the US West and Australian Outback’. Western American Literature 48/4 (2014), 374–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcus, George E. ‘Introduction’, in Para-Sites: A Casebook Against Cynical Reason, ed. Marcus, George E.. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. 1–13.Google Scholar
McCormick, Lisa. Performing Civility: International Competitions in Classical Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meintjes, Louise. ‘Paul Simon's Graceland, South Africa, and the Mediation of Musical Meaning’. Ethnomusicology 34/1 (1990), 37–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, Andrea. ‘Neoliberalism and the Musical Entrepreneur’. Journal of the Society for American Music 10/1 (2016), 33–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morcom, Anna. ‘Terrains of Bollywood Dance: (Neoliberal) Capitalism and the Transformation of Cultural Economies’. Ethnomusicology 59/2 (2015), 288–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Negus, Keith. Music Genres and Corporate Cultures. London: Routledge, 1999.Google Scholar
Nooshin, Laudan. ‘Introduction to the Special Issue: The Ethnomusicology of Western Art Music’. Ethnomusicology Forum 20/3 (2011), 285–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norman, Katharine. ‘Stepping Outside for a Moment: Narrative Space in Two Works for Sound Alone’, in Music, Electronic Media and Culture, ed. Emmerson, Simon. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. 217–44.Google Scholar
Norman, Katharine. ‘Telling Tales’. Contemporary Music Review 10/2 (1994), 103–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Ortner, Sherry B. Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Ortner, Sherry B.. Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Paget, Jonathan. ‘Has Sculthorpe Misappropriated Indigenous Melodies?’ Musicology Australia 35/1 (2013), 86–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pippen, John. ‘Toward a Postmodern Avant-Garde: Labour, Virtuosity, and Aesthetics in an American New Music Ensemble’. PhD diss., University of Western Ontario, 2014.Google Scholar
Ramnarine, Tina K. ‘The Orchestration of Civil Society: Community and Conscience in Symphony Orchestras’. Ethnomusicology Forum 20/3 (2011), 327–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ritchey, Marianna. ‘“Amazing Together”: Mason Bates, Classical Music, and Neoliberal Values’. Music and Politics XI/2 (2017), 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robin, Will. ‘A Scene Without a Name: Indie Classical and American New Music in the Twenty-First Century’. PhD diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2016.Google Scholar
Scharff, Christina. ‘Blowing Your Own Trumpet: Exploring the Gendered Dynamics of Self-Promotion in the Classical Music Profession’. The Sociological Review 63/1S (2015), 97–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scharff, Christina. ‘The Psychic Life of Neoliberalism: Mapping the Contours of Entrepreneurial Subjectivity’. Theory, Culture & Society 33/6 (2016), 107–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sennett, Richard. The Fall of Public Man. London: Penguin, 2002.Google Scholar
Straus, Joseph N. ‘The “Anxiety of Influence” in Twentieth-Century Music’. The Journal of Musicology 9/4 (1991), 430–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Timothy. Global Pop: World Music, World Markets. New York: Routledge, 1997.Google Scholar
Taylor, Timothy. ‘Fields, Genres, Brands’. Culture, Theory and Critique 55/2 (2014), 159–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Timothy. Music and Capitalism: A History of the Present. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Taylor, Timothy. ‘Taking the Gift Out and Putting It Back In: From Cultural Goods to Commodities’. Keynote address for Branding ‘Western Music’ conference, Bern, September 2017.Google Scholar
Taylor, Timothy. ‘Taking the Gift out and Putting it in Again: From Cultural Goods to Commodities’, in The Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising, ed. Tan, Siu-Lan, Deaville, James, and Rodman, Ronald. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Thompson, Marie. ‘Whiteness and the Ontological Turn in Sound Studies’. Parallax 23/3 (2017), 266–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toynbee, Jason. ‘Music, Culture, and Creativity’, in The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction, ed. Clayton, Martin, Herbert, Trevor, and Middleton, Richard. New York: Routledge, 2012. 166–7.Google Scholar
Toynbee, Jason. Making Popular Music: Musicians, Creativity and Institutions. London: Bloomsbury, 2016.Google Scholar
Toynbee, Jason. ‘The Labour that Dare not Speak its Name: Musical Creativity, Labour Process and the Materials of Music’, in Distributed Creativity: Collaboration and Improvisation in Contemporary Music, ed. Clarke, Eric F. and Doffman, Mark. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. 37–51.Google Scholar
Tsing, Anna. ‘The Global Situation’. Cultural Anthropology 15/3 (2000), 327–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsing, Anna. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsing, Anna. ‘Sorting Out Commodities: How Capitalist Value is Made Through Gifts’. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3/1 (2013), 21–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsing, Anna. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Unsigned. ‘Archive’. ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions. www.historyofemotions.org.au/publications-resources/archive/ (accessed 30 July 2019).Google Scholar
Unsigned. ‘About’. Genevieve Lacey. https://genevievelacey.com/about/ (accessed 3 October 2018).Google Scholar
Unsigned. ‘A Brief History of Time’. Genevieve Lacey. https://genevievelacey.com/projects/a-brief-history-of-time/ (accessed 3 October 2018).Google Scholar
Unsigned. ‘Jan Bang’. www.samadhisound.com/janbang/ (accessed 3 October 2018).Google Scholar
Unsigned. ‘Pleasure Garden’. Genevieve Lacey. https://genevievelacey.com/projects/the-pleasure-garden/ (accessed 3 October 2018).Google Scholar
Unsigned. ‘Pleasure Garden’. Pleasure Garden. www.pleasuregarden.com.au/ (accessed 3 October 2018).Google Scholar
Unsigned. Programme note on Pleasure Garden concert, Melbourne Recital Centre Salon, Melbourne, 22 September 2016.Google Scholar
Unsigned. ‘Projects’. Genevieve Lacey. https://genevievelacey.com/projects (accessed 30 July 2019).Google Scholar
Unsigned, ‘Words: Pleasure Garden’, Genevieve Lacey, https://genevievelacey.com/words/pleasure-garden/ (accessed 3 October 2018).Google Scholar
van Baak Griffioen, Ruth. ‘A Field Guide to the Flowers of the “Fluyten Lust-hof”: Notes on the Familiarity of the Tunes Van Eyck Chose’, in The Recorder in the 17th Century: Proceedings of the International Recorder Symposium, Utrecht 1993, ed. Lasocki, David. Utrecht: STIMU, 1995. 159–75.Google Scholar
Waters, Simon. ‘The Musical Process in the Age of Digital Intervention’. ARiADA Texts 1/1 (2000), n.p.Google Scholar
Wilf, Eitan. ‘Semiotic Dimensions of Creativity’. Annual Review of Anthropology 43/1 (2014), 397–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wind, Thiemo. ‘Jacob van Eyck's Der Fluyten Lust-hof: Composition, Improvisation, or…? Consequences for Performance Practice’, in The Recorder in the 17th Century: Proceedings of the International Recorder Symposium, Utrecht 1993, ed. Lasocki, David. Utrecht: STIMU, 1995. 177–95.Google Scholar
Wong, Deborah. ‘Ethnomusicology without Erotics’. Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 19 (2015), 178–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Discography

Bayaka: The Extraordinary Music of the Babenzélé Pygmies. Recordings and text by Louis Sarno with producers’ notes. Produced by Bernie Krause. CD, Ellipsis Arts CD3490, 1995.Google Scholar
Eno, Brian, and Hassell, Jon. Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics. Polydor/EG, 2335 207, 1980.Google Scholar
Lacey, Genevieve. Pleasure Garden. CD, ABC Classics, ABC4812370, 2016.Google Scholar