What Do We Assume in Music?
written by Molly Joyce
2019 GLFCAM Chabuca Granda Fellow, Cycle 11
Do we assume a concert experience will always be aural? Do we assume the best performance is the most virtuosic, the most physical, the hardest? And do we assume that the seeming abstractness of music escapes identity, vulnerability, humanity?
These are questions that I have been grappling with over the past few years, overlapping with participating in GLFCAM. I became interested in social assumptions and especially of the human body since discovering disability studies during graduate school. During such, I learned of the social model of disability, which states we are disabled by barriers and constructions around us, as opposed to the dominant medical model which focuses disability as to be cured rather than explored. I have an impaired left hand from a previous car accident, and for nearly twenty years, I assumed I wasn’t disabled. I assumed I needed to conform to the norm and hide my inabilities; hide what I couldn’t control, and ultimately hide my disability’s possibility.
Thus, discovering disability studies and the social model ignited an inquiry of assumptions in musical practices. This has overlapped with accessibility measures such as American Signed Language interpretation and audio descriptions in my productions to provide multiple sensory inputs, and encouraged thinking that within musical contexts, much is often presumed and expected. I wonder if we infer that musical transmission is always an aural, physically-produced experience within certain constructs, and ask how this came to be.
For example, often physically-disabled performers are compared to the norm/standard and how they can play an instrument as expected. Yet, why is this normal assumed to be normal? Where did such form and can we redefine it? Can we allow for new forms of virtuosity to emerge that aren’t so physically focused, not only aiming for the highs and extremes but also the lows and in-betweens? Can those be cherished as well?
Throughout my time in GLFCAM, learning from Gabriela and the collegial composers and performers has been incredibly insightful for rethinking such methods and processes, specifically alongside composers of varying impairments and thinking about what we assume in musical contexts, ranging from notational standards to performance expectations. Most Western-classical standards and instruments are constructed for very specific bodies of very specific abilities, and thus very specific virtuosities. One has to ask if new forms of virtuosity emerge when we question our assumptions. Questioning leads to new virtuosities and possibilities, and perhaps one grounded in identity, vulnerability, and humanity.
Active as a composer and performer, Molly Joyce’s music has been described as one of “serene power” (New York Times), written to “superb effect” (The Wire), and “impassioned” (The Washington Post). Her works have been commissioned and performed by several distinguished ensembles including the New World Symphony, New York Youth Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and the New Juilliard, Decoda, and Contemporaneous ensembles. Learn more from Molly’s bio page.