Embodying Expression, Gender, Charisma –
Breaking Boundaries of Classical Instrumental Practices

The Artwork Excellence of Listening by Renata Kambarova, Kai Ginkel and Barbara Lüneburg

A series of 25 posters exhibited at Bruckner University on the occasion of EmEGC' Open House on 29.9.2023

The artwork Excellence of Listening (2023) by Renata Kambarova, Kai Ginkel and Barbara Lüneburg, features the audience of Western classical concerts. It grew out of sociologist Kai Ginkel's investigation of how the term "excellence" is not only a driving factor in the concert landscape of classical music and in its branding, but is also physically embodied by the participants in a circle in which everyone participates, thereby reinforcing the "excellence" of the situation experienced together. Excellence is experienced through the supreme performance of the musicians and soloists we admire on stage, the masterpieces of the centuries presented to us in the constant canon of the magnificent, through the interior of the concert hall with its symbols of royal excellence, golden chandeliers, ruby red velvet-covered chairs, and through the excellence of listening, concentration and dedication embodied by the individual listeners and the audience as an acting collective. Thus, excellence circulates and is embodied between a network of acting agents in the classical concert situation.
In our artwork, which consists of a series of twenty five different posters, we juxtapose footage from real concert situations of the Western classical music scene, showing the audience in their collective action, with isolated listening attitudes and bodily postures typical of classical concertgoers, which we re-enacted in the premises of the Anton Bruckner Private University. These postures are an expression of what we call "excellence in listening": postures of the most solemn absorption, superb intellectual attention and critical reflection, sensual, devoted enjoyment, and supreme concentration.
The accompanying texts are all quotes from researchers that appear in the anthology Classical Concert Studies, (Tröndle, Martin (Ed). 2021. Routledge). Read in combination with the imagery we intend to encourage the onlooker to critically appraise and reflect on the classical concert setting.

Kai Ginkel on the concept of 'excellence' in the conception of the Western classical concert hall, and the development of the artwork Excellence of Listening:

The traditional concert hall is a place that stands for excellence in terms of selection, curatorship, and ambience. According to musicologist Elena Ungeheuer it provides musicians with a "sacred space" (cf. Thorau 2021,72) for performances and instrumentalists must demonstrate their worthiness of this site. The audience is also an integral carrier of this cultural excellence, which is thus generated in a collective effort.
The audience in a classical concert is put into specific postures by the spatial environment and the cultural expectations that are associated with it. The listeners' bodies are put into a state of collective discipline. Through the characteristically immobile seating, the bodies face the stage so that 'the music' becomes the principal focus of attention. Facial expressions indicate seriousness, attentiveness, and immersion. Even the style of dress is instrumental in embodying excellence as a hybrid element.
Through photographs that are based on our personal experience, our fieldnotes and research in audience footage, we take on a range of observed listening postures by recreating them outside of their venues. This brings attention to the specifics of embodiment in this context. It indicates a spectrum within which the postures are situated. In our research process, this spectrum gives us insight into circulating conventions, values and the socio-material achievements of listening practices in traditional concert environments from a perspective that emphasises the role of the body.

Exploring Gestures for airviolin and soundtrack (2023)

Exploring Gestures (2023) is the first composition developed in the framework of EmEGC. It emerged from an exploration of how performers' bodies play a central role in communicating the expression of music. The bodies of soloists on stage, like the music we hear from them, tell a story. Musicians act out not only musically but physically facets of the music they tell. In doing so, they embody different emotions or personalities. In the course of developing Exploring Gestures, Barbara Lüneburg re-enacted the interpretation and analysed the bodily expression of Maxim Vengerov, María Dueñas, Salvatore Accardo, Sergej Khatschaturjan and Janine Jansen and worked out typical postures (see Fig.1). and is based on the analysis of gestures and bodily postures of various violinists that Barbara Lüneburg re-enacted and analysed through her practice of remixing. The video shows the live performance on 30.3.2023 on the occasion of Lüneburg's key note at the EPARM conference in Copenhagen at the Royal Danish Academy of Music.

Photo Series RE-ENACTING EMBODIMENT

The photographer Reinhard Winkler artfully captured Barbara Lüneburg re-enacting the soloists Sergej Khatchaturian, Maxim Vengerov and María Dueñas.