May 27, 2025
Linz (Austria), Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität
PARL – Platform for Art and Research Linz – Symposium Next Generation 2025 “Overcoming Boundaries: A Dialogue Between Artistic and Scholarly Research”
Giovanni Cestino (ITER Research Ensemble, University of Milano)
Anna Martini (ITER Research Ensemble, Conservatory “Agostino Steffani”)
Abstract
ITER Research Ensemble is a vocal and research group composed of advanced students, graduates, and PhDs in Musicology, all with prior experience and a strong interest in choral singing. Founded in Cremona (Italy) at the end of 2022 and run by a non-profit, student-led association, the group emerged as a “research collective” aimed at exploring the possible intersections between musicological research and musical practice within a choral setting.
Since its foundation nearly three years ago, ITER has undertaken a range of member-led projects that have engaged the entire ensemble in performance, practice-based research, and critical discussion. These projects have encompassed repertoires from the late Middle Ages to contemporary music, drawing on a variety of methodologies, outputs, and cross-disciplinary, institutional, and musical frameworks. Across this diverse body of work, certain recurring approaches have surfaced and been collectively examined, shaping a community of practice and nurturing a sustained theoretical reflection on the interplay between research and music-making.
In this paper, we offer a self-ethnographic overview of the ensemble’s activities, focusing on how this experience has influenced the academic and musical lives of ITER members in light of the recent emergence of artistic research in Italy, particularly in relation to the introduction of doctoral programs at conservatories. We then explore how the ensemble and its projects have been received within academic circles, amateur choral communities, and by audiences both in Italy and internationally (Europe and the United States). Finally, we consider how ITER can serve as a case study for examining and theorizing the interaction between research and practice in a collective musical context—one in which “we do research on the music we sing, and we sing the music we do research on.”