Author: Heather Roche (University of Huddersfield)

Communicative movement in contemporary chamber music: hand werk in the rehearsal of new works by Thierry Tidrow and Georgia Koumará

Movement, that essential element for any musician, plays a distinct role in new chamber music. It is one of the ways that musicians communicate and it is a choreography that leads and shapes the performance of the work. We use movement to help guide each other through the piece, to indicate shifts in texture and dynamic, and to breathe and find a common pulse. It is regularly annotated in a precise manner, clarifying where to look or who should be given a signal, and each annotation reflects the needs of that particular instance in the score. Notation guides our movements just as we guide each other.

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