Dynamics of Constraints

The Orpheus Institute has been providing postgraduate education for musicians since 1996 and introduced the first doctoral programme for music practitioners in Flanders (2004). Acting as an umbrella institution for Flanders, it is co-governed by the music and dramatic arts departments of all four Flemish colleges, which are strongly involved in its operation.

Throughout the Institute's various activities (workshops, master classes, seminars, interviews, and associated events) there is a clear focus on the development of a new research discipline in the arts: one that addresses questions and topics that are at the heart of musical practice, building on the unique expertise and perspectives of musicians and constantly dialoguing with more established research disciplines.

Within this context, the Orpheus Institute launched an international Research Centre in 2007 that acts as a stable constituent within an ever growing field of enquiry. The Orpheus Research Centre in 2007 that acts as a stable constituent within an ever growing field of enquiry. The Orpheus Research Centre in Music [ORCiM] is a place where musical artists can fruitfully conduct to all invidual and collaborative research on issues that are of concern to all involved in artistic practice. The development of a discipline-specific discourse in the field of artistic research in music is the core mission of ORCiM.

This Subseries of The Collected Writings of the Orpheus Institute, will explicitly `zoom in' on studies that take artistic practice as their point of departure and deal with questions and challenges that arise from that practice. It is this kind of research, in all its variety, which the Orpheus Research Centre in Music promotes and which the Subseries is designed to present. The contributions within the Subseries extend the possibilities and understanding of musical practice and act as a springboard for future research in this young but facinating area. The three essays of Dynamics of Constraints express some fundamental issues addressed by ORCiM's research group `the musician's relation to notation'. Paulo de Assis argues that critical editions should generate critical users, advocating for a new kind of editor and performer; Mieko Kanno's contribution reflects the rapid expansion of the use of electronics in contemporary music, stating that every new work creates an original compositional environment, Where the performer's movement-sound co-ordination is given a new significance, while Juan Parra Cancino points towards a kind of composition, where both the performing and the listening experience don't aim to achieve a `final' version of the piece-an entity that might ever manifest.