Peter Peters (P.F.)

Peter Peters is endowed professor in the innovation of classical music and associate professor at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University. His background is in sociology and philosophy. He holds a PhD for his dissertation on mobilities in technological cultures, in which he combines insights from social theory and science and technology studies (STS) to analyze practices of travel. Before coming to Maastricht University, he worked as a classical music journalist and critic. From 2008 to 2013 he was professor in the research centre ‘Autonomy and the Public Sphere in the Arts’ at Zuyd University, Maastricht. Here, he developed research on artistic research and its relation to science and technology studies, as well as site-specific art, and art in the public sphere. 

His current research combines a life long passion for music with an interest in how artistic practices can be a context for doing academic and practice-oriented research. In previous years, he worked on an ethnography of a project at the Orgelpark in Amsterdam aimed at building a baroque organ for the 21st century. It explores how this project draws on historical and contemporary practices of pipe organ building. More recently, his research focuses on innovating classical music practices, especially symphonic music. Together with Stefan Rosu, he developed the research lines in the MCICM: the role of classical music and its value for society; the ways in which the relationship between performers of classical music, such as symphony orchestras and their audience is mediated; and the ways in which classical music practices contribute to the preservation of our cultural and social sounding heritage. With Ruth Benschop and Stefan Rosu he wrote the application for the NWO/SIA funded Artful Participation project that combines strategic research into reasons for the declining interest in symphonic music with artistic research to innovate this practice in an artistically relevant way.

At the MCICM, Peter will play a leading role in developing interdisciplinary academic and practice oriented research that combines reflection with making and performing, hence its focus on artistic research. Together with the staff of the MCICM and of the partner institutes, Peter hopes to design experiments in practice that will lead to new models for the symphonic practice and build (Eu)regional and international research consortia and partnerships.

My research focuses on: (1) the production of knowledge in artistic practices, and (2) the innovation of musical cultures. The first research line combines my work at the research centre Autonomy and the Public Sphere in the Arts at Zuyd University and my academic research in the field of Science and Technology Studies. I am interested in developing a symmetrical understanding of the ways the arts and the sciences create experimental situations in which non-propositional forms of knowledge, such as experiential and embodied knowledge, can be demonstrated, contested and disseminated. This research resulted in journal articles and book publications, one of which addressed the way audiences can have a creative role in artistic practices (Peters, 2013). The second research line focuses on musical practices as contexts of cultural reproduction. I conducted ethnographic research on André Rieu and his travelling orchestra as a study in musical adaptation and appropriation. Currently, I am working on a four-year ethnographic study of pipe organ building practices. This research investigates how knowledge, techniques and craftsmanship are developed in the practice of building a new baroque organ in the Orgelpark in Amsterdam.

Coordinator of the MARBLE-project 'Theatre at the Border. An Artistic Research Project' (2011)