Archive
IJMSTA - Vol. 8 - Issue 2 - July 2026
ISSN 2612-2146
Pages: 11
A Practice-Based Study of Comprovisation in Contemporary Viola Performance
Authors: Yauheni Skrypnikau
Categories: Journal
Abstract - This article investigates how comprovisational practices reshape instrumental action and performative decision-making in contemporary viola performance. Situated within the field of artistic research, the study examines how collaborative rehearsal processes, improvisation, and unstable performative conditions influence bodily organisation, attention, and musical action during performance. Rather than approaching musical performance as the execution of fixed compositional structures, the article considers performance as a situated and adaptive process emerging through continuous interaction between performer, instrument, and compositional environment. Drawing on reflective analysis of rehearsal and performance situations developed within contemporary music residency contexts, the study explores how temporal instability, ambiguous articulation, constrained gestural material, and sustained physical tension generate ongoing processes of adjustment and negotiation in performance. Methodologically, the research is grounded in practice-based inquiry. Rehearsal observation, video documentation, and reflective writing are used to examine moments in which performative decisions become perceptible through bodily adaptation and instrumental interaction. The article does not attempt to produce a scientific model of bodily movement in performance; rather, it approaches instrumental action as an experiential and artistic process shaped through collaborative practice. The article argues that comprovisational performance contexts do not merely expand compositional possibilities, but fundamentally transform the performer's relationship to instrumental agency, authorship, and musical decision-making. In doing so, the study contributes to current discussions in artistic research concerning embodiment, collaboration, and practice-based methodologies in contemporary music performance.
Keywords: Artistic research, Contemporary viola performance, Comprovisation, Performer-composer collaboration, Embodiment, Practice-based research, Instrumental action, Improvisation, Performance studies
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