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MUSICOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM

19/11/2013

“Onze kut-subcultuur-shit-muziek”: Dutch improvised music and the politics of (self-)representation

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap
MA Loes Rusch

December 12, 15:30-17:00
Universiteitstheater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, zaal 3.01

During the 1960s a group of jazz musicians emerged in the Netherlands that distanced themselves from American models of jazz performance. Rather, these self-acclaimed improvising musicians (Han Bennink, Misha Mengelberg, Willem Breuker, among others) sought for their own musical identity by challenging existing boundaries in terms of performance, musical genre, and artistic discipline. In this process they not only committed themselves to the renewal of musical life in the Netherlands, but also to more socially engaged forms of music making.

This talk addresses ways in which media representation has shaped the establishment of Dutch improvised music as a distinctively Dutch form of art. By taking a closer look at fascinating examples of improvised music (Breuker’s “Litany for the 14th of June, 1966,” Leo Cuyper’s Zeeland Suite) I will further demonstrate how improvising musicians strategically – and most intriguingly - deployed the media in their attempts to gain governmental support.

11/11/2013

Composing inside electronics – The Music of David Tudor

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap
prof. Julia Kursell

November 19, 15:30-17:00
Universiteitstheater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, zaal 3.01

For a long time, David Tudor (1927-1997) was mainly known as a pianist who premiered the music of avant-garde composers. More recently, his compositions and performances with his group “Composers inside Electronics” and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company have attracted attention. For the historian of music, however, these compositions seem almost inaccessible, because they aimed at live-performance in a radical sense: most often, Tudor made no score, no circuit diagrams, no other prescription; recordings are scarce. But what is more, he designed his equipment in such a way as to be self-destructive. Most importantly – and this will be the central feature of his music I address in this talk – the resulting sounds seemed to live on their own and they also ceased to exist in ways that made them resemble living beings. In my talk, I will relate this feature to the concept of indeterminacy that Tudor had encountered as a pianist in the music of John Cage and the New York School. Departing from there, I will then discuss how his music challenges tacit assumptions about self-identity in musical composition.