SEAN BELL
Countertenor and Performance Artist
Revive the Leaden Strings
An exploration of 17th century British vocal music through a poetic, experimental and ‘haptic’ approach to Historically Informed Performance (HIP).
As a countertenor, I perform my own arrangements of Early Music which stay close to the source material’s text and melody, but use new instrumentation, harmonisation, and tonality. A synthesis of historical and contemporary performance makes up the core of my artistic practice. I see my relationship to interpretation as a practice of Historically Informed Performance (the method used in Early Music, often shortened to HIP). However, the repertoire always acts as material with which to create, without a preconceived idea of what the result will be. I work broadly and exploratively with all these composite elements in order to embody the interpretation.
The research is centred around the following question:
How can I explore interpretation in Historically Informed Performance through a poetic, experimental and “haptic” approach?
With the attached sub-questions:
- Is it possible to have a HIP practice that doesn’t result in an Early Music interpretation?
- How can I critically engage with interpretation to reveal the world views that Early Music repertoire inhabit and through this illuminate contexts of today?
With these questions on interpretation in the context of HIP, I hope to lay bare the technologies (in the Foucauldian sense) of the present and the past, illuminating each through contact with the other. To investigate these questions, I propose a project where I look at British vocal music from the 17th century in three lab experiments:
Lab experiment 1 - Recording Nostalgia With baroque guitar, bass viol and four-track tape machine as sonic palette, Sean Bell will explore lute songs. Connecting HIP as a method to record history and tape machines as a retro recording device, what will the interplay between these nostalgic technologies be?
Lab experiment 2 - MASK Exploring the allegorical performance genre Masque through a modern performance art lens. Genealogies like gesture, masking the face, ambivalence of character, are reassembled with abstract language from performance art. What are the worldviews contained within each performative language?
Lab experiment 3 - Baroque Band Using music from the declamatory style (style within English 17th-century music), Bell will explore how band tradition as a collective creative process rooted in pop and jazz, can work with a HIP ensemble. Can the result be a theatrical baroque gig?
I hope the reflections around this project could heighten dialogue and criticality towards why we engage with HIP and how this informs our ideas and world views. I believe this project also infiltrates the realm of social ideas and conventions. I am interested in how musical material encode and create systems of belief across history. In this project I would not only set different tools, ideas and aesthetics against themselves but insodoing also reveal the worldviews they inhabit or that inhabit them.
This project forms the basis of my PhD in artistic research at the Norwegian Academy of Music.
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Avoiding and Affirming Definition
In April 2024 I conducted an artistic research residency at Studio LOOS, Den Haag (NL). This culminated in a work-in-progress presentation, open to the public. The research question was about moving beyond ‘arranging’ early music as my primary form of creative practice:
So far in my artistic research I have worked using early music songs/repertoire. With arrangement as my creative tool, I found freedom working within these parameters, and built a concept driven project from preexisting material. Now I want to explore how I can break out of this framework and create a new starting point for myself. Moving beyond arranging in my practice how can I bridge the roles of composer, performance artist and early music singer, through a focus on concept rather than form?
During the residency I explored concepts from different styles of early music repertoire. This was my approach to historically inspired performance: to start with an idea or concept derived from the music or the context that the music was created in historically. I worked with the fundaments of the music without the notes: text, mood, instrumentation, tonality and timbre. I experimented with different compositional tools like graphic scores, free improv, electronics, and live recording. I also invited collaborators with other expertise and views.
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No Joy in the Brilliance of Sunshine, Master Research
Master research conducted as part of my Master’s in Early Music Voice at the Royal Conservatoire, The Hague NL.
Ending in the stage performance piece No Joy in the Brilliance of Sunshine, this master research explored how I could combine my duality as a performer: the early music singer and the contemporary performer and creator. The project and its connected research were a central part of my artistic development as a musician, creator and performer, and the urge to explore this music and the questions had grown out of previous projects and ideas.
The goal of the research was to help me to explore this field with my own artistic identity and gather experience and specific knowledge that could lead to new projects, collaborations and further develop the outreach of my artistic work.
Research question I saw this research as a tool to guide the development of the project. I wanted it to inform my choices and strengthen the reflection on the artistic idea, process and product. For this reason, I chose the following research question:
How can I create a stage performance combining and connecting my two sound worlds/style identities as a performer?
Through using operatic music by Handel with thematic inspiration from the book ‘Heart of Darkness’ by Joseph Conrad, I would answer this question.
Read the research at the Research Catalogue
Instrument Building and Music Electronics
In 2021 I built my Electric Baroque Guitar, from a ¾ size electric guitar kit. The idea was to create an instrument that I could use for realising the Dowland Downloaded project live, but it evolved into becoming a sort of physical manifestation of my master research: the combination of modern/electronic and Baroque.
Specifications about the instrument can be found here.
Recently, I started experimenting with cassette tape loops, and using a four-track tape deck for layering sounds and building arrangements. During the latest Dowland Downloaded tour I used the tape deck for drum loops and backing tracks in combination with my electric baroque guitar and keyboard.