Musiques: Recherches interdisciplinaires
Attached to the Observatoire interdisciplinaire de création et de recherche en musique, Université Laval (OICRM-ULaval) of the Faculty of Music of Laval University (Québec, Canada), the journal Musiques : Recherches interdisciplinaires wishes to respond to a need to publish research in music whose desire is to go beyond disciplinary limits. Published twice a year since its foundation in 2023, Musiques : Recherches interdisciplinaires is a bilingual journal (French and English) whose content lies within the field of possibilities in music, without necessarily recreating existing boundaries and always persisting in the field of musical research. Musiques: Recherches interdisciplinaires adheres to the principles of diamond open access, holding that the production, dissemination, and consultation of knowledge should be free from financial barriers. Authors are not charged to publish, and readers have unrestricted access to all content. This editorial position reflects a commitment to open, responsible scholarly communication, independent of commercial logics.
L’Observatoire interdisciplinaire de création et de recherche en musique de l’Université Laval (OICRM-ULaval)
To better understand the co-creation process of a song: reflexivity in service of a research-creation project
How are ideas intertwined during a co-creation process? What kind of relationship develops between the co-creators and their work? Why is co-creation sometimes so difficult, even in an atmosphere of trust and respect? While collaborative creation has been the subject of much research in education and psychology, it remains relatively unstudied in its own right, as a specific mode of creation. This article reports on a musicology project adopting a research-creation approach. The research component aims to better understand the co-creation process of a song through active participant observation (APO), while the creation component aims to produce a song that is meaningful to its co-creators. Through a hermeneutic and reflective approach, I demonstrate that considering my own journey within this project allowed me to better understand the complexity of the creative, collaborative, and interactional components of the co-creation process. My analyses, based on transcripts, a logbook, individual interviews, and cross-self-confrontation, also enabled me to reflect on the role of a person in a position of authority within a co-creation group: how can they intervene to "facilitate" the creative process while minimizing their influence on it? Indeed, I chose to collaborate with young people aged 15 to 17 with no prior songwriting experience, thus testing Vygotsky's (1981) concept of the zone of proximal development. In summary, my results show that resorting to a more traditional epistemological stance would not have allowed us to reveal certain intersubjective subtleties of the co-creation process, such as the surprising ambiguity of the link that unites the co-creators to their song.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sarah-Anne Arsenault https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Create in spite of, create with, create together
Introduction to volume 2, number 2.
Copyright (c) 2025 Sophie Stévance https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Lawrence English — WhiteOut: Between Anemoia, Memories and Real Experiences of the Territory [review]
Review of Lawrence English's album, WhiteOut. Room40 RM4100, 2025.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ludovic Tourigny https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
La culture au Québec au temps de la pandémie. Réaction, adaptation, normalisation, résistance et hybridation [review]
Review of Hervé Guay, Louis Patrick Leroux et Sandria P. Bouliane's book, La culture au Québec au temps de la pandémie. Réaction, adaptation, normalisation, résistance et hybridation. Montréal : Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 2024, 440p. ISBN : 9 782 760 650 329
Copyright (c) 2025 Jean-Hugues Robert https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Listening to the Aesthetics of Popular Culture
In the last fifty years, Congolese popular dance music (also known as “Congolese rumba”) has become something of a musica franca for much of sub-Saharan Africa. As Congolese like to say, the captivating sound of their music, firmly grounded in Africa’s encounter with afro-Cuban culture, has “colonized the rest of the continent”, but the music has gone through a series of important aesthetic changes since it first emerged in the urban colonial centers of the Belgian Congo. Despite this rich history, limited research has been done on the subject and very little has been published on Congolese popular music from the point of view of aesthetics. By tuning in on local conversations about certain aspects of the music’s structure and form, this text attempts to understand how Congolese popular dance music attempts to transcend the ugliness of an ongoing political and economic crisis that has become increasingly acute since independence (la conjoncture) and how this particular expression of beauty enables us to better understand the relationship between aesthetics and politics more generally. The perception of “noise” in the analysis of popular music reveals more about our inability to understand non-Western aesthetic criteria than about popular music per se. Drawing from the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, the metaphor of listening is used to argue that the difficulty of hearing music from someone else’s point of view should not be used to justify a retreat into the self.
Copyright (c) 2025 Bob W. White https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The place, nature, functions and uses of the model in music creation in secondary school
The aim of this article is to consider the musical model when it appears in the creative process at school. While the very idea of a model may raise questions in the creative process, in situations of musical creation at school, it seems to be very much present. In order to understand its place, nature, functions and uses when it is mobilized in the situation of musical creation in the school setting, we analyze creative situations in music education at secondary school, as well as the verbatims of self-confrontations of these same situations. In the situation of musical creation at school, the model seems to be envisaged either as a “means” of creation to explain or suggest creative ideas, or as an “object” of creation as a musical idea to be mobilized in the creative process, and in both cases to facilitate entry into action. This raises the question of how the student uses the model to enter the creative process. How do student appropriate models to move from simple imitation to the invention of a new element?
Copyright (c) 2025 Frédéric Maizières, Alexis Vachon, Sébastien Blanquart, Sandrine Liogier https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
What music cleaves: a body, a place, a machine
Introduction to volume 2, number 1.
Environmental music creation fostering eco-aesthetic sensitivity towards urban soundscapes
The composer and theorist Murray Schafer proposed the concept of soundscape, which transformed our understanding of our place in the world by questioning the extent to which sound can influence our relationship with our environment. The distinction made by Schafer and his colleagues between hi-fi and lo-fi soundscapes leads to a bias against urban spaces, whose significant activity is primarily viewed as a form of noise pollution. The focus then shifts to reducing this urban activity rather than exploring its aesthetic potential. This results in a divide between humanity and nature, which are then considered two distinct entities rather than two elements of a unified whole. We can therefore ask how the creation of environmental music, an aesthetic movement offering pieces composed from field recordings, might generate a new eco-aesthetic sensitivity towards urban soundscapes that would bridge the divide between humanity and nature? I propose to approach this issue through the lens of Guattari's ecosophy, using a research-creation approach that involves a dual immersion: in the creative process and in the landscape. My objectives are: 1) to collect sounds in an urban space; 2) to conduct a typological analysis based on parameters defined by the WSP (World Sound Project) to understand their perceptual and cultural roles in the space; 3) to create works of environmental music representative of the compositional practices of this movement; and 4) to manifest Guattari's ecosophy through the production and listening of environmental music.
Kinok: From a cinematic concept to a fusion of music and dance. A unique approach by Thierry de Mey and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
This article focuses on the study of the phenomenon of the simultaneous exploration of musical and choreographic writing, a phenomenon that has been gradually developing in contemporary Western artistic creation. Renowned collaborations, such as that between Igor Stravinsky and George Balanchine for Agon, or between John Cage and Merce Cunningham during their happenings, serve as notable examples, although distinct in their approaches. Emerging at the end of the 20th century, Kinok by Thierry De Mey and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker illustrates this desire for reciprocity through a formal process inspired as much by mathematical as by poetic logic, juxtaposing the physical writing of dance with sound composition. Stimulated by Dziga Vertov's concept of "Kino-Oki," De Mey explores its principle to guide co-creation with the choreographer. How can this cinematic logic, capturing multiple perspectives simultaneously, be adapted to co-integrate musical and dance writing? And how far can the joint exploration of a compositional process be taken? The objective of this article stems from this question and aims to reveal the methods employed by the composer of Kinok. To carry out this study, a paradigmatic approach was favored. Through the creation of "layers" based on observation of the video recording and the tracking of the score, we gathered diverse information on the same sequences at both macro and micro levels. These gestural and sonic elements made it possible to identify key structural "nodes" in the composition, highlighting "points of divergence" and facilitating the understanding of the overall form, as well as essential compositional processes. A heuristic approach was also employed through the collection of various sources, including interviews with the creators, which are crucial for understanding the creative process.
création interdisciplinaire musique-danse
Copyright (c) 2025 Vera Geslin Potapova https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The "sound libraries" of Senegalese beatmakers: origins, uses and creative processes
Based on a doctoral dissertation defended at EHESS in March 2023, which examines musical creation in the digital era among Senegalese hip-hop producers (or "beatmakers"), this article highlights the central role of the "sound library" in creative processes. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in studios, as well as interviews with musicians and cultural actors in Senegal, the objective of this study is to demonstrate that these libraries are not merely the sum of the samples they contain. Their organization reflects classification strategies and criteria (by theme, type, date, or origin). Moreover, the computer desktop, where these sound banks are stored, constitutes a site of knowledge that is also inherently connected, embedded within multiple scales, from the local to the global. The sound banks of beatmakers thus offer insight into how they navigate these dynamics, shedding light on the relationships between samples in terms of their origin and use.
Copyright (c) 2025 Maël Péneau https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Review - Béla Bartók in Italy: The Politics of Myth Making
Review of Nicolò Palazzetti's book, Béla Bartók in Italy: The Politics of Myth Making. Woodbridge : Boydell Press, 2021. 302p. ISBN : 9781783276202.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jade Huard https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Introduction to volume 1, number 2.
Copyright (c) 2024 Sophie Stévance https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Review of Bruno Deschênes' book, Une phénoménologie de l’écoute. Ouverture Philosophique. Paris : Éditions L’Harmattan, 2024. 332p. ISBN :978-2-336-44711-7.
Copyright (c) 2024 Ludovic Tourigny https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Reception of Béla Bartók in Italy: From the Cultural History of Fascism to Contemporary Debate
This essay provides a detailed account of the reception of the Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, and pianist Béla Bartók (1881–1945) in Italy through an analysis of periodicals, public and radio broadcasts of his concerts, and private correspondence. The 20th-century Italian reception of Bartók serves as a prime case study for understanding the genesis and dissemination of the myth of Bartók as an anti-fascist hero. The essay also considers, from a comparative perspective, Bartók’s reception in France. Appreciated in Italy as early as the 1910s, Bartók’s music achieved considerable success under Mussolini’s regime despite the composer’s hostility to fascist violence. Bartók was later associated with anti-Nazi cultural resistance in the early 1940s and ultimately became a martyr for freedom in the aftermath of World War II. The “Bartók wave” that finally took hold in Italy during the Cold War resulted from the fusion of the myth of Bartók as a “musician of freedom”—a definition coined in 1947 by the anti-fascist musicologist Massimo Mila—and the myth of national rebirth. This fusion had its origins in the soundscape of the fascist dictatorship and the Resistenza. While providing French-speaking readers with essential reference points on the Italian reception of the Hungarian composer, this essay also examines the “Bartók myth.” This issue has sparked debate within contemporary musicology and may have implications for reassessing the composer’s international reception.
Copyright (c) 2024 Nicolò Palazzetti https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Facilitate the synchronization of young students' movements to the pulse of a musical work played in the classroom
In French-speaking Switzerland, school curricula recommend that young students synchronize their movements with the beat of music through walking. Our research sought to determine whether, at the age of 5 years (+/- 6 months), locomotor functions are more suitable than non-locomotor functions for achieving bodily synchronization with music. Young students attempted to synchronize their movements with the beat of a piece by Vivaldi, either by walking or by clapping while seated. Our results show that for the students in our sample (n = 9), synchronized walking was too complex, unlike clapping while seated. We develop some ideas for classroom organization and management to introduce rhythm teaching at the beginning of schooling.
Copyright (c) 2024 François Joliat, Antonio Trajanoski https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Musics: for a breaking down of disciplinary barriers
Introduction to Musics: for a breaking down of disciplinary barriers (vol. 1, n° 1).
Symphonie pour le jour où brûleront les cités (Art Zoyd) as a gateway for the undercommons
To what extent can music influence our lives? This is a question that long preoccupied the researcher's mind as it accompanied his journey. Not just any music: the music of Art Zoyd, a band from Maubeuge whose trajectory and message influenced his own path and choices. Was he more receptive to this music, which explored new dimensions, or was it simply part of the "undercommons"? Tracing the history of this period, this article seeks the opportune moments that allowed him to realize that, through these "undercommons," another destiny was possible.
Copyright (c) 2024 Noël Jouenne https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Recognizing the work of artists employed at the university: Funding for research and creation in Quebec and Canada
This contribution aims to identify and better understand the consequences of what we will call acts of persuasion within the university ecosystem in Canada. Taking into account sociological, political, and ethical factors, as well as the facts revealed by this scientific work, this article identifies four key areas of study: 1) an ambiguity in the composition of grant evaluation panels within research funding bodies, leading to 2) confusion in the use of research funds allocated to creative projects and, in turn, generating 3) a troubling confusion (this time of a semantic nature) in the definitions of research and creative projects (and consequently of "research-creation"), all of which is further fueled by 4) administrative problems and possible collusion that persist within this ecosystem between artists and decision-making administrators. Based on these markers, which point to a complex and thorny situation, the article outlines possible solutions to better understand the place and role of artistic culture at the university, and to recognize the contribution of artists at its true value, in particular by proposing a more appropriate way of managing research and creation funds, especially for students.
Copyright (c) 2024 Sophie Stévance, Serge Lacasse https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Jean-François Charles’s Missa brevis Abbaye de Th​é​l​è​me interleaves texts of the Mass Ordinary with French poems from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. These poems interpret the mass texts, and conversely the mass texts weave the poems into a rite, and a ritual space. The album sonifies the gargantuan, utopian abbey described by the ex-Franciscan friar François Rabelais in the first book of Gargantua and Pantagruel (ca. 1532). Rabelais’s Thelema Abbey is the basis of Alistair Crowley’s Thelema spiritual movement, the sole principle of both being “fais ce que voudras” (the first words on the album). I show that the poems’ supplementation of the mass texts in their musical context evokes the will aligning one with divine love. I explicate this supplementation with reference to sympathetic elements in the exegesis of Philip K. Dick. Charles’s mass triangulates us between (1) a heartfelt search for God in the midst of war and inner turmoil (highlighted in the Sanctus and Benedictus), (2) a conflict between unloving zealots and willful iconoclasts (spelled out in the Kyrie and Agnus Dei), and (3) a utopia of divine love (seen especially in the Gloria and Credo). Dick similarly shares actual memories of alternative timelines, triangulating us between (1) a so-called “black iron prison police state world” in which Christianity is illegal (2), this world, partially good and partially bad, in which we and Dick exist, and (3) a paradise presided over by Aphrodite, the goddess of love. In listening to / visiting the mass/abbey, to borrow a phrase from Gurnemanz in Richard Wagner’s Parsifal, “time becomes space.” Through the mass’s prayer, we can aim to jump timelines, as if they were arrayed in space, making Arcadia more real for us, at least for the duration of the album, if not permanently.
Copyright (c) 2024 Matthew Arndt https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Yoruba Rythmic Deities: A Brief Analysis of Chucho Valdés’s Use Of Yoruba Rhythms related to My Own Performance Practice
Yoruba rhythms have been an endless source of inspiration to musicians around the world since their African birth. As the Yoruba religion has played a major role in shaping Cuban culture since the massive arrival of West African slaves on the island in the nineteenth century, a multitude of Cuban instrumentalists and composers have shown undeniable Yoruba influences. Chucho Valdés is one of the most famous figures to illustrate this phenomenon. For more than five decades, he has performed, improvised, arranged, composed, mixed, mastered and edited music that not only uses Yoruba rhythms but also strongly celebrates the general Afro-Cuban legacy. Valdés is a pioneer and model to most Cuban musicians, including myself, because he has developed a unique and personal style through the hybridization of two powerful and distinct musical genres: jazz and Afro-Cuban music. I have been greatly influenced by this pianist since I started learning music, and I believe I have been following his path in my recent quest for hybrid creative music. In this essay, I will discuss the personality of the Yoruba deities in relationship with their rhythms. Then, I will do a brief analysis of Chucho Valdés’ performance practice and use of Yoruba rhythms. Finally, I will tend to in related Chucho’s approach to my own approach. I will attempt to define and analyze both ways of approaching piano performance, improvisation, and composition and will illustrate the main differences. I will then explain why I have chosen this musical direction and sketch out my personal path within the broader perspective of contemporary jazz performance practice.
Copyright (c) 2024 Rafael Zaldivar https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Serial vocalizations: Cyclic twelve-tone series
Some dodecaphonic series are cyclic, that is, they are based on a sequence of 2, 3, 4 or 6 intervals, repeated at an ascending or descending interval x. This study explores the characteristics of this type of series, the means to generate them, as well as their number.
Copyright (c) 2024 André Papillon https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The echo of romantic bells in Vincent d'Indy's Le Chant de la Cloche
This study focuses on the role and symbolism of the bell in Vincent d’Indy’s opera Le Chant de la Cloche (Opus 18, subtitled “Dramatic Legend”). Composed for the fourth edition of the City of Paris Music Competition in 1885, this work is based on Friedrich Schiller’s poem Das Lied von der Glocke (“The Song of the Bell”), published in 1799. The main thesis of this article is to demonstrate that the prominent role of the bell throughout this composition—whether it appears in imitation of the various instruments of the orchestra or actually on stage for the final scene—places Vincent d’Indy within a Romantic tradition, in which the bell holds a unique position: it is a sacred object that not only rings out across all ages but also unites people through its unparalleled sonic intensity, its religious character (the bell is baptized), and its harmonious sound. In this lyrical work composed by Vincent d’Indy, the bell rings at all the important stages of the protagonist Wilhelm’s life, a bell ringer by trade. The emphasis is placed on the bell’s successive appearances throughout the musical work and on the role assigned to it by the composer. This musical study is complemented by historical and sociological elements. Indeed, numerous archival documents attest to a multitude of “bell incidents” in the 19th century, as demonstrated by Alain Corbin’s work on the soundscape of the French countryside during that period. Consequently, such a musical work presents, in addition to its musical and literary interest, a historical significance, since it allows for the reconstruction of a soundscape that has now vanished.
Copyright (c) 2024 Lucas Berton https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
“Brilliant Gathering at Bayreuth”: Early Wagnerism as told by Toronto’s Globe (1857-1876)
In June of 1887, Torontonian were treated to the local premiere of Flying Dutchman, the first opera by Richard Wagner to be performed in full in the city. Yet while locals had had to wait decades for such an occasion, newspapers had started reporting on the composer as early as 1854. In this paper, I consider Wagner’s reception in Toronto from 1874 to 1876 by surveying mentions of Wagner in the newspaper the Globe, focusing on the years 1875 and 1876. In particular, I ask how the materiality of technology effects its transmission in the era prior to sound recording. Drawing from the work of Michel Serres, I propose the concept of the parasite as a way of unpacking how the material realities of opera unfold. Parasite refers to a third element—“a mediate, a middle, an intermediary”(Serres 2007, 63)—between sender and receiver which sets the stage for communication to take place. Importantly, the parasite is not a neutral entity: it is transformative by default. I relate the concept of the parasite to that of the paratext, materials which surround but are not officially part of a text. Precisely because of the difficulty of accessing live opera on demand, paratext hold the potential to transform how we understand Wagner. I explore the role of newspapers in Wagner reception but also widens to theorize how other pre-recording technologies such as sheet music and the telegraph facilitated Wagner’s migration over the Atlantic. Through these media, we can not only glimpse the prehistory of Wagner in the city but also how his music has been continually fragmented and reworked. I argue that when access to live opera is limited such paratexts are charged with the potential to not only supplement but to transform and overtake the original.
Copyright (c) 2024 Emilie Hurst https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0