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HABITUS, RESISTANCE AND THE PRODUCTION OF MUSICAL MEANING

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 August 2024

Niamh Dell
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Abstract

This article defines and explores the concept of ‘resistance’ as a source of musical meaning in performance. Using Pierre Bourdieu's concept of ‘habitus’ as a framework, I examine my musical habitus: the embodied, internalised ways I play my instrument and think about music, which reflect my extensive musical histories and the fields in which these histories have taken place. Resistance arises in practice when this habitus is undermined. When the types of musicking undertaken circumvent my habituated understanding of acceptable performance and performative roles, it manifests as a pull towards more familiar modes of musical engagement. Making specific reference to resistance experienced in the development and performance of Alex Harker's Drift Shadow (2021), for solo oboe and electronics, the article outlines the ways in which my subjective relationship to my instrument and my role as a performer produce particular understandings of a work that can then nuance the way I play the piece.

Type
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Information
Tempo , Volume 78 , Issue 309 , July 2024 , pp. 79 - 89
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Alex Harker with Niamh Dell, Drift Shadow, for oboe and electronics, 2021. Premiere performance: https://youtu.be/lHEWsysupaA, studio recording forthcoming.

2 Wacquant, Loïc, ‘Pierre Bourdieu’, in Key Sociological Thinkers, ed. Stones, Rob, 2nd edn (New York: New York University Press, 2008), p. 322Google Scholar.

3 Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, tr. Nice, Richard (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 70Google Scholar.

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8 Wacquant, ‘Pierre Bourdieu’, p. 268.

9 For specific reference to the concept of habitus as a creative tool in composition and performance, see Stefan Östersjö, ‘The resistance of the Turkish Makam and the habitus of a performer: Reflections on a collaborative CD-project with Erdem Helvacioǧlu’, Contemporary Music Review, 32(2-3) (2013), pp. 201–13, and Kathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö, ‘Habitus and the Resistance of Culture’, in Artistic Experimentation in Music, eds Darla Crispin and Bob Gilmore (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2014), pp. 333–48. For discussions of resistance as a performative force, see Marc Couroux, ‘Evryali and the exploding of the interface: From virtuosity to anti-virtuosity and beyond’, Contemporary Music Review, 21(2-3) (2002), pp. 53–67; Richard Craig ‘by way of the BREATH, to the LINE’, in Performance, Subjectivity and Experimentation, ed Catherine Laws (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2020) pp. 109–24; and Aden Evens, Sound ideas: Music, machines, and experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).

10 Wacquant, ‘Pierre Bourdieu’, p. 85.

11 James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), p. 127.

12 Markus Tullberg, ‘Affordances of Musical Instruments: Conceptual Consideration’, Frontiers in Psychology, 73 (2022), p. 8.

13 Luke Windsor and Christophe de Bézenac, ‘Music and Affordances’, Musicae Scientiae, 16, no. 1 (2012), p. 108.

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17 Spatz, What a Body Can Do, p. 26.

18 Torrence, Jennifer, ‘Soft to the Touch: Performance, Vulnerability, and Entanglement in the Time of Covid’, VIS – Nordic Journal for Artistic Research, 6 (2021)Google Scholar, paragraph 2.

19 Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, ‘Compositions, Scores, Performances, Meanings’, Music Theory Online, 18, no. 1 (2012), https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.12.18.1/mto.12.18.1.leech-wilkinson.pdf.

20 Ibid., paragraph 3.3.

21 Bull, Class, Control, and Classical Music, p. 85.