Embodying the cycle: Knowledge-making through an A/r/tographic inquiry into performing Schubert's Gretchen am Spinnrade

Although vocal performance involves continuous interaction among technique, bodily experience, musical interpretation, and reflection, these dimensions are often considered separately rather than as interconnected aspects of the performer’s experience. This study examines how repeated engagement with Franz Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade, Op. 2, D. 118, reveals changing relations among these dimensions and how the concept of “cycle as becoming” emerges from this process. Situated within a qualitative arts-based research paradigm, the study is grounded in a/r/tography, where the roles of artist, researcher, and teacher remain relational rather than hierarchical. The study draws on six reflective journal entries produced by a performer-researcher who is a university-level voice educator during six weeks of engagement with the work. A second author contributed to collaborative interpretation and manuscript development. The journal was analysed through reflexive thematic organisation and a relational a/r/tographic reading, supported by collaborative author review. The analysis focused on bodily sensation, breath, musical continuity, accompaniment, technical difficulty, language, and pedagogical reflection. The findings were organised into three relational movements: entering the cycle, the cycle teaching the body, and internalising the cycle. Across these movements, the reflective data shifted from fragmentation and a sense of being outside the musical whole towards continuity, breath organisation, perceived endurance, pedagogical interpretation, and an internally organised sense of tempo and agency. Throughout this process, cycle extended beyond the recurring musical structure of the work to encompass the performer’s changing relations with the body, reflection, and pedagogical thought. In conclusion, the study demonstrates that repeated performance and reflection transformed the relations among technical, bodily, musical, and pedagogical experiences over time and conceptualises this transformation as “cycle as becoming.” Further research should examine this process across additional singers, repertoires, and multimodal data sources.