Collaboration Between Performer and Composer: The Case of Loreta Narvilaitė’s Violin Concerto Early Will the Sounds Rise High

Abstract

The article examines the collaboration between composer and performer (creative collaboration) within the process of musical creation. In recent decades, composers in the field of academic music have increasingly tended to engage performers in the creative process, taking their observations and recommendations into account. For composers and performers who lack such experience, it is important to learn from the practice of others, while for researchers it is essential to gain a deeper understanding of the process itself.
After examining the theoretical concepts published by the researchers Farell and Rosiak and conducting an artistic study based on empirical data, a model of the creative collaboration process was distilled. This model identifies the stages and sub-stages of the process: pre-collaboration (consisting of exploration of the creative field and the formation of a relationship), collaboration (including negotiation of the vision, the composer’s creative activity, and the performer’s contribution), and post-collaboration (the result). The experience of an experimental creative collaboration of the violinist and co-author of this article, Julija Andersson, with the composer Loreta Narvilaitė provided the article with authentic empirical data.
In order to determine the type of collaborative relationship between composer and performer, after reviewing similar theoretical concepts (Hayden and Windsor 2007; Budai 2014; Rosiak 2018), the study proposes a typology of creative collaboration that reveals the nature of this relationship. Four types of collaboration are identified: (1) directive, (2) indirect, (3) direct, and (4) symbiotic. Following a review of the creative processes behind post-minimalist violin concertos and a survey of composers and performers involved in these processes, appropriate examples were selected for each type. An analysis of the collaborative relationship between the composer Loreta Narvilaitė and the violinist Julija Andersson during the preparation of the premiere of the Concerto for Violin and Chamber Orchestra Early Will the Sounds Rise High (2025) identified their interaction as an example of direct collaboration.