Bringing new works to life : collaboration and interpretation in the performance, recording and editing of new works for guitar

This project aims to make clear the nature of collaboration between performer and composer. Whereas the roles of composer and interpreter are essentially sequential, the roles of collaborators are, by definition, interactive. While an interpreter comes to a score as a finished piece of work, a collaborative performer is involved with the composer's creative process before the musical score obtains its final form. As an intermediary between the composer and the audience, the interpreter must balance the literal requirements of the printed score with his or her own understanding of the composer's intentions and the needs of the performance. The printed score is a necessarily limited medium and interpreters define the extent of their own creative freedom in relation to its constraints and their understanding of its meaning. The purpose of this Master of Music project is to demonstrate my creative contribution, as both interpreter and collaborative performer, to the realisation of new musical works for guitar that were written between 1995 and 2002 by composers resident in Tasmania. The project consists of a recital of works by Graham Southwell Brown, Russell Gilmour, Maria Grenfell, Don Kay, John Lockwood and Raffaele Marcellino with a master recording of performances of these works for later release on CD or for broadcast. These are accompanied by a performance edition of the works by Brown, Gilmour, Grenfell and Kay that includes my fingerings, editorial marks and the revisions that have arisen from the process of collaborating with these composers. The exegesis outlines my collaboration with the composers of the works, and places the project in the context of writings by performers, composers, and musicologists on the interpretive role of the performer and the nature of collaboration between performer and composer