Sound & Score brings together music expertise from prominent international researchers and performers exploring the intimate relations between sound, score and notation, and the artistic possibilities that this relationship yields for performers, composers and listeners.

His instrument, his technique, his music and his life

In this dissertation the author digs into the constituent elements of River Plate tango in order to decode how specific musical materials were organized and combined by four outstanding musicians: Pugliese, Salgán, Piazzolla and Beytelmann.

This dissertation derives from the development of tools for algorithmic composition which extract pitch materials from sound signals, analyzing them according to their timbral and harmonic properties, putting them into motion through diverse rhythmic and textural procedures.

Worlds of sound is important for everyone who is interested in listening to music of the 20th century or for anyone involved in studying or performing contemporary music. The central question is how to interpret music in case the performer is not willing to depend on personal taste or conventions.

Playing the piano with your forearm, plucking the strings, sawing through the piano: pianist Luk Vaes's doctoral dissertation covers all the techniques of play for which a piano is NOT designed. His defence ceremony will consist of three concerts and a public defence. 'Musicians were using the interior…

Composer Paul Craenen (1972) is actually a pianist, but as part of his PhD ceremony, he performed a composition on PVC pipes. Craenen studies the position and role of the body in music. ‘I am interested in what precedes the resulting sound’.

From The Cognitive Continuum of Electronic Music:

How do we experience electronic music? How does electronic music operate on perceptual, cognitive and affective levels? What are the common concepts activated in the listener’s mind when listening to electronic music? Why and how are these concepts activated?

Understanding the nature, characteristics and function of the secular vocal intabulations and dances found in Italian printed keyboard sources in the 16th century

The present study aims to establish and develop guidelines for effective use of the classical guitar’s scoring potential.

Today’s performances of medieval polyphony have a lot in common with those of other ‘classical’ or ‘early’ music. Ensembles perform pieces written by known or lesser known composers, which the listener can revisit by listening to recordings or reading a score.

In September, the eighth issue of the Journal of Sonic Studies will be online, dealing with sounds and/from outer space.

Apart from his activities as coordinator of the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Rogier Schneemann is co-founder, guitarist and composer of the Dutch-Italian group Azure Hiptronics, originally formed in 2006.

Memory, Imagination, and Mimetics in Contemporary Composition and Historical Performance

This thesis investigated how microphones and loudspeakers could become musical instruments.

This thesis proposes multiple paths towards the development of a performance practice in Computer Music.

Frans Preumayr's nineteenth century virtuosic bassoon repertoire - An approach with a fine Grenser & Wiesner bassoon from Dresden: Issues of material and technique

This thesis examined two previously neglected topics, Baroque Italian recorders and the Neapolitan Baroque repertoire for the recorder, and then combined both aspects.

This dissertation explores various perspectives on the term immersion, and its relation with, and transformation through, a composer’s practice.

In our culture, vocal harmonics function as independent musical elements since only a few decades. Thresholds of the audible explores the changing relationship between singers, listeners and harmonics.

Anna Scott is a Canadian pianist-researcher interested in using the early twentieth century recordings of the Brahms circle of pianists to question persistent gaps between the loci of knowledge, ethics, and act in both modern mainstream and historically-informed performances of Brahms’s late piano w…

This book is witness to Hendrik Vanden Abeele’s research into the development, construction and creation of a present-day performance practice of late medieval plainchant, based partly on his work with the Belgian chant group Psallentes.

Tactile Paths is an artistic research project that aims to expand and articulate the feedback between notation and improvisation in experimental music.

Baroque flautist Jed Wentz followed two years of dancing classes in order to develop the right feeling for the gestures required for the Baroque French opera genre ‘tragédie en musique’. In his dissertation, the links between gesture affect and rhythmic freedom in the performance of the tragédie en…

The focus of the research lies in the approach of reducing, denying, or taking away essential elements of music making in order to let the musician become theatrical.

The thesis presents a new perspective on Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger (ca.1580-1651), who is nowadays only famous for his works for theorbo and lute, his remarkable output of vocal music of all genres being still mostly neglected from musicologists and performers.

Leiden University Professor and world renowned Bach specialist Ton Koopman returned to the San Francisco Symphony for two weeks of concerts celebrating J.S. Bach and his legacy.

docARTES PhD candidate Donna Agrell will graduate on Tuesday 8 December 2015

Yannis Kyriakides, PhD student at Academy of Creative and Performing Arts , has received the prestigious International Rostrum for Composers award, in the category over 30 years, for his cello, video and electronics piece: Words and Song Without Words.

In the field of Western art music, improvisation has become a much discussed topic. In this interdisciplinary study I argue that in this context, improvisation is not to be seen as a quasi-autonomous skill or art form, but as an aspect of music-making in general.

Former student of Leiden University professor Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, Cyprus-born ACPA researcher Yannis Kyriakides, currently developing his PhD dissertation under the supervision of Professor Frans de Ruiter and docARTES PhD supervisor/ORCiM research fellow Dr. Bob…

Recently, four books have been published which contain a chapter by ACPA senior researcher, lecturer and PhD-supervisor Dr. Marcel Cobussen.

On the occasion of the 440th DIES NATALIS, celebrated on Monday 9 February, Leiden University proudly awarded an Honorary Doctorate to William Christie, renowned harpsichordist, conductor, musicologist and teacher, and the foremost pioneer in the renewed appreciation of Baroque music in France, notably…

Between 1600 and 1800 countless manuals appeared on the subject: the improvised bass part on the harpsichord, pianoforte or organ. Musician and researcher Kathryn Cok unravels the secrets of the Dutch basso continuo accompaniment for modern-day musicians.

On 20 December 2013, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) announced that 37 teachers will be conducting doctoral research funded by a Doctoral Scholarship. Using this scholarship, teachers are enabled, in addition to their educational activities, to conduct research leading to…

docARTES is a doctoral programme for performers and composers. It offers a unique environment for critical reflection on musical practice.

Listening and Looking with dr. Janneke Wesseling and dr. Marcel Cobussen

In the interview by Manu Sinjan, published in Eos Memo, Hafez Ismaili m'Hamdi addresses questions about the changing role of music in society through history, which is also the topic of his course 'From Plato to Pussy Riot'.