Academic Presentations in 2008 & 2009
upcoming events (scroll down for details):
December 17-19: Kiel, Germany
'Mengelberg meets the Molech(s) of the New Era: Orchestral Performances in Sound and Vision'
January 31-February 1: Utrecht, the Netherlands
Present, past and future of Dutch Musicology
February 26-28: Los Angeles, U.S.A.
'Filming with Mengelberg - revisited'
April 16-19: Hong Kong, China
'Beijng opera and a hammered piano: East meets West in Dutch music' (submitted)
May 16: Orgelpark, Amsterdam
'Creation in the moment of performance: Mengelberg's improvisando demonstrated via his recordings'
July 4-5: Amsterdam, the Netherlands
-launch IMS Study Group Music and Media, plus
'Brief encounters of a third kind: first Life live concerts in Second Life venues'
July 5-10: IMS IAML Joint Conference, Amsterdam
'Grab it, Motherfucker, Grab it!: Multiple appearances of a single composition'
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March 12 & 14: New York, USA
Music, Body, and Stage: The Iconography of Music Theater and Opera, City University of New York
The Tenth Conference of the Research Center for Music Iconography, CUNY &
The Twelfth Conference of the Répertoire Internaitonal D'Iconographie Musicale
photo's by András Borgó
'Mengelberg conducts Oberon: The Conductor as Actor, Anno 1931'
'...this specific film production is a useful example for the consideration of a series of problems, either theoretical or practical. These include questions about aspects of performativity, questions concerning Mengelberg’s specific performing practice, about the relation between music and images, as well as questions about the historical context of this film production...'
April 11: London, England
Music, Oppression and Exile:
The Impact of Nazism on Musical Development in the 20th Century
Royal Holloway & Institute of Musical Research - School of Advanced Study, University of London
http://jmi.org.uk/downloads/ExileConferencedraftprogramme.pdf
Institute of Musical Research, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1: 17.20 hours
'Some of the Jewish musicians are back at their desks',
a case study in the remigration of European musicians after World War Two
rosa spier
October 9-11: Zurich, Switzerland
MONITORING SCENOGRAPHY 2: SPACE AND TRUTH / RAUM UND WAHRHEIT
ZÜRCHER HOCHSCHULE DER KÜNSTE (ZHdK) ZURICH UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS
Institute for Design and Technology Postgraduate Program Scenography
In 1995, Baudrillard states that an «event is not entirely true or false, but rather oscillates between one, two or three octaves of truth.» When juxtaposing Baudrillards “fractal truth” with an assumed notion of truth inherent in all art, we must ask whether and how artists and designers address this virulent contradiction Illusion, simulation, immersion and appropriation are among the central design strategies in contemporary (mediated) spatial practice in scenographies of the theatre, architecture and art – with complex relationships to truth / reality, representation and mimesis: In our three day symposium, representatives from (media) art, philosophy, curatorial practice and exhibition design, theatre studies, human geography, music and performance present and discuss these complex relationships in regards to their own research and artistic practice. «Monitoring Scenography 2: Space and Truth» is the second in a series of annual transdisciplinary symposia and
publications focused on tendencies and developments in contemporary scenography.
-Session 12: Virtual Vertigo, Friday October 10, 16.00 hours
Chair: Emile Wennekes
papers by Daniel Tercio, Technical University of London and
Pablo Ventura, Tanzakademie Zurich
-Session 3: (Virtual) Sound Worlds, Friday October 10, 9.30 hours
Chair: Thea Brejzek
papers by Tahera Aziz, London South Bank University,
Pamela Scorzin, Kunstakademie Stuttfart and
Emile Wennekes:
'Brief encounters of a third kind: first Life live concerts in Second Life venues'
(Classical) music within the virtual environment of Second Life (SL) is a niche in research.
To date, neither musicologists nor new media scholars have shown hardly any interest
in this phenomenon. In Baudrillard’s terms[1] SL could be considered a sumulacrum,
even one with ‘immersive’[2] qualities. Music, in a way, has the same qualities;
it can be immersive and is capable of providing a simulacrum.[3]
Music’s function within SL, however, can only be understood at the intersection
of two worlds: Second and First. The sound of music and parts of the visual
footage are created in Real Life, and subsequently ‘streamed’ into SL.
So the signs of ‘the real’ function not only as substitions for ‘the real itself’,
but are now ‘remediated’[4] within a newly created, ‘hyperreal’ context.
Analyzing music within SL, therefore, raises not only questions of a
philosophical and technical nature, but also ones relevant to
performativity, reception, ‘liveness’[5] and even economy. Besides these,
there is the matter of the spatial design of simulated concert venues.
T hey are either replica or ‘chimaera’, as I would call them - a choice for one or
the other brings with it significant consequences.
In this paper, music events within SL will be briefly catergorized. Concentrating
on ‘classical music’, the technical possibilities and limitations of
performances will be considered in order to pinpoint the tensions between
First and Second Life (re)presentations at the crossroads of the ‘real’,
the hyperreal and the remediation.
Notes:
[1] Jean Baudrillard,’ Simulacra and Simulations’, in: Selected writings. Ed.: M. Poster ( Stanford: University Press 1998), 166-184.
[2] Martin Lister et.alt., New Media: A critical introduction. (London: Routlegde, 2003).
[3] Tia DeNora, ‘Music as technology of the self’, in Music in everyday life (Cambridge: University Press, 2000).
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. Transl. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).
[4] An informal use of the term as described in Jay David Bolter & Richard Grusin, Remediating: understanding New Media. (Cambridge: MIT Press 2000).
[5] Philip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture. (New York: Routledge, 1999).
December 18-19: Kiel, Germany
Freitag, 19.12. 2008 – Bach-Saal des Musikwissenschaftlichen Instituts
der CAU Kiel
Rudolf-Höber-Straße 3, 24118 Kiel. 13.30 u
'Mengelberg meets the Molech(s) of the New Era: Orchestral Performances in Sound and Vision'
Kieler Symposium zur Filmforschung
Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel
April 16-19: Hong Kong, China
Beijng opera and a hammered piano: East meets West in Dutch music
In western Europe, creative cross-breedings and confrontations between Eastern
and Western music idioms have had an intriguing history. The Netherlands,
a small country that has had commercial ties with Asia for more than four hundred years,
forms an outstanding example in this respect. In the proposed paper,
musical encounters between East and West in recent Dutch music history will be discussed.
Firstly, light will be shed on Ton de Leeuw’s (1929-1996) compositional oeuvre and his
deeply rooted belief that art and philosophy in the West should merge with their
counterparts from the East. Secondly, there are significant and relevant compositional
techniques used by a younger generation:.Guus Janssen (1951) wrote an opera wherein
singers from the Beijng Opera play a significant part (Hier˚, 2000).
In Willem Jeths’ (1959) composition Fas/Nefas (1997) the piano is sardonically
hammered with sicks and treated like a Japanese koto.
A third point of attention will be contemporary ensembles that gather an eclectic
mix of instruments to play styles from all over the world, thusly creating hitherto
unheard music. Bun-ching Lam (1954), Theo Loevendie (1930), Guo Wenjing (1956)
and Jia Daqun (1955) are just a few of the composer’s who have written for the Holland
based Atlas Ensemble. Their specific culture-exceeding works are exemplary of creative
confrontation between East and West.
May 16: Orgelpark, Amsterdam
'Creation in the moment of performance: Mengelberg's improvisando demonstrated via his recordings'
July 4-5: Amsterdam, the Netherlands
-launch IMS Study Group Music and Media, plus
'Brief encounters of a third kind: first Life live concerts in Second Life venues'
July 5-10: IMS IAMAL Conference, Amsterdam
'Grab it, Motherfucker, Grab it!: Multiple appearances of a single composition':
It is not uncommon that scores, orginally intended for one instrument or combination of instruments, are rescored for other instruments – sometimes with a composer’s permission, sometimes without it, sometimes with his(/her) collaboration. Occasionally, idiomatic changes are made. These multiple appearances of a single composition are certainly a challenge to music librarians intent on efficient codification.
A new phenomenon has cropped up in contemporary composition which poses an even greater challenge. Nowadays, one title can cover a whole series of works. The concept of rescoring can be further enriched by ‘remediation’, by adding text samples or images, thusly creating extra layers of meaning.
In this paper the various shapes of Grab it!, a composition by Dutch composer Jacob ter Veldhuis (alias Jacob TV), will be analysed in all its different versions, notations and their subsequent performative countenances. One could argue that the composition turns into a ‘format’ here, instead of belonging to a fixed genre. The piece is no longer a forma formata, to quote Dutch musicologist Frits Noske, not a completed form, but rather a forma formans, a formative form - or perhaps even an argumentum formans, a formative content.