This doctoral dissertation explores classical music performance from a curatorial perspective, reflecting upon and challenging the traditional configuration of performance environments.

This book collates thematic reflections on Cameroon music exalting Manu Dibango, one of the first-generation Cameroonian musicians, who bowed to Covid-19 on 24 March 2020.

If, as the works of John Cage suggest, there is “no such thing as silence,” then what are the markers that show us we are experiencing silence? - what are the performative cues during musical silence? - what are the auditory and visual bookends of silence in performance, i.e. what anticipates and…

How can we enhance inspiration in metric modal improvisation and subsequently, in modal composition?

Knowledge and culture subproject 1:

Performances of solo keyboard repertoire can sound more or less polyphonic depending on the performer’s use of divergence in expression.

How can historically-informed performers step outside the confines of the work-concept?

Before 1936, musical practices in Palestine relied heavily on colloquial poetry, especially in rural communities, which constituted most of the population. In this dissertation, Issa Boulos has examined historical records that revealed many differences and similarities between Palestinian communities…

'Audible locality' is the first thorough study on the cultural ramifications of recording technology on ethnic sensibility in Southeast Asia. Exploring chronologically the representation of Indonesia's regional culture through recording media, it recounts the Dutch East Indies colonial society's initial…

Who were the main artists and producers who generated new forms of popular music? What was the music like that was produced by artists in particular urban settings? How were particular lifestyles articulated to identify new audiences and what does this reveal about the way popular music contributed…

Artistic research has come of age, and with it the Orpheus Institute. Founded twenty years ago, the Institute’s purpose from the start has been to pursue research through the practice of musicians.

For the first time, a group of international and interdisciplinary researchers led by Karline Janmaat and her former MSc Student Chirag Chittar, have tested the several hypotheses on music simultaneously in a modern foraging society during their daily search for tubers – their staple food. They found…

Seger Kersbergen studied the Cabo Verdean nightlife in Rotterdam. He explains how their music describes their nightlife and daily lives.

Sonic Modernities situates Southeast Asian popular music in specific socio-historical settings, hoping that a focus on popular culture and history may shed light on how some people in a particular part of the world have been witnessing the emergence of all things modern.

ACPA Professor of Auditory Culture and Music Philosophy Marcel Cobussen will give a lecture at the Gaudeamus Academy Workshop Weekend. The GMW Academy is a prelude to the contemporary music festival Gaudeamus Muziekweek, taking place from 7 to 11 september in diverse venues within the center of Utr…

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.

Improvisers in experimental music do not record their music in a conventional score, but in ever-changing 'tactile pathways'. This is the proposition put forward by researcher Christopher Williams. PhD defence 13 December.

The thesis wishes to examine the pathways of thought underlying the creative act of music making and the performance practice of complex music from the late twentieth and early twenty-first century.

Leiden University Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) launches the open online course Music & Society on Coursera to advance worldwide access to high-quality education. The course starts on January 9, 2017 and will be taught by Prof. dr. Marcel Cobussen and drs. Hafez Ismaili M’hamdi.

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

My research focuses on theories of the sublime by the Berlin Enlightenment philosophers Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86) and Johann Georg Sulzer (1720–79).

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

Playing a musical instrument is generally considered to be a complex human behaviour involving the integration and coordination of a broad range of human functions such as perception, imagination, memory, information processing, emotion, communication, and dexterity.

Two events on Music and the Brain will be held in Leiden later this month.

Music of Possibility is a personal account of what, for composer Richard Barrett, are the most consequential areas of twentieth- and twenty first-century musical innovation, and how, together with a web of technologies, cultures and politics, they have informed his creative practice.

Is our musicality unique? That’s what the Bird Singalong project aims to find out. And for that, they need the help of feathered friends from all around the world. ‘By researching how parrots learn songs, we also learn more about the origin of our own musicality.’ Do you have a parrot that can sing…

This Spring we relaunched our free online course The Importance and Power of Music in our Society.

Wordt het nog wat met de Arabische lente?

The “harpe organisée”, 1720-1840: Rediscovering the lost pedal techniques on harps with a single-action pedal mechanism, is the title of Maria Christina Cleary's PhD thesis. This is the first monographic study on harp pedal techniques, tracing the historical way to pedal on the early pedal harps with…

Composer, bass player and ACPA alumnus Ilya Ziblat Shay presented a paper at the Music Weekend and Midlands New Music Symposium, organised by Nottingham Forum for Artistic Research.

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…

MOOC Music & Society

In a series of six lectures, Jed Wentz, the Utrecht Early Music Festival’s artistic adviser, will acquaint you with subjects central to the developments in early music worldwide. First lecture starts 15 October!

Musicologist Dinko Fabris has been appointed professor at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA). He started on 1 September. 'I’m looking forward to making a connection with society.'

This year, Leiden University celebrates its 444th birthday – and when you’re giving a party, you need great music! Neuropsychologist Rebecca Schaefer agrees. She has been fascinated by music since she was a child, and now she studies how music can make us happy, give us energy or calm us down.

Arts and culture, Een verhaal in een andere taal: de meerwaarde van meertaligheid

Over the past year, the lectorate ‘Music, Education & Society’ has worked on a publication with contributions from students and staff from the KC called 'The promise of music'.

Richard Barrett has launched a new digital music label on Bandcamp.

What was the stringed instrument known in medieval and early Renaissance Italy as “cetra”?

Rachel Beckles Willson started her career as a concert pianist but was later captivated by the Middle Eastern stringed instrument called the oud. On 1 December, she was appointed professor by special appointment of 'Intercultural Performing Arts'.

On January 9 the ACPA kicked off their first MOOC Music & Society. And with 1700 (!) applicants we dare to say it is a success!

This research intents to redefine the limits of the electric guitar.

A meeting place for singing parrots. That is one of the ambitions of Michelle Spierings’ new project. With her awarded NWO XS grant, she wants to test the parrots’ hearing ability. ‘I am curious to see how they can recognise and imitate changing melodies. And it would be amazing to test that with a…

The Leiden University Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) will start in January 2017 with their first MOOC through Coursera: Music & Society. MOOC stands for massive open online course and is a relatively new phenomenon of open access and free internet education in the United States. Big…

Using musical cues to learn a physical task significantly develops an important part of the brain, according to a new study co-authored by Leiden psychologist Rebecca Schaefer. The results are published in the journal Brain & Cognition.

This fall, LUCIS will have the pleasure of welcoming Professor Maribel Fierro, Research Professor at the CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid), to Leiden. She is the third Abdulaziz Saud Al-Babtain Cultural Foundation Visiting Professor in Arabic Culture at Leiden University…