Collaboration Between Non-Guitarist Composers and Guitarists: Analysing Collaborative Modalities Applied to the Creative Process

This paper discusses composer and performer collaboration, specifically in cases involving guitar repertoire by composers who do not play the instrument. The research was divided into two phases: an exploratory stage, which consisted in interviews with non-guitarist composers and guitarists and a case study, which presents my own collaborative experience with the composer Samuel Peruzzolo-Vieira, focusing on the different modalities of collaboration during the composition process of three pieces for solo guitar written between 2015 and 2016. The aim is to categorise and characterise the relevant stages of collaboration, demonstrating and discussing the collaborative modalities, the performer’s suggestions and the composer’s decisions. All stages of the collaboration were documented on video, which functioned both as a register of the process and as a multimedia support that helped the composer during the composition. Results show the different approaches explored in each collaboration modality while discussing the creative work during the entire process.