Late breaking information

MUSICOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM

26/11/2014

Richard Taruskin (15-18 december)

Van 15 tot 18 december zal prof. dr Richard Taruskin (University of California, Berkeley) deelnemen aan een serie lezingen en debatten in Amsterdam en Utrecht, georganiseerd in een samenwerking tussen de opleidingen Muziekwetenschap aan de Universiteit Utrecht en de Universiteit van Amsterdam, het Conservatorium van Amsterdam en het Orgelpark.

Op 15 december zal prof. dr Taruskin om 16:00 een lezing geven in het Universiteitstheater (Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16), zaal 3.01, getiteld:

Resisting the Rite

Everyone knows about the hostile audience reaction to the first performance of Le sacre du printemps, but resistance to the work and its original import has been constant over the course of the century since then, affecting its subject, its interpretation, and its performance practice. The chief resisters were Stravinsky, Diaghilev and Roerich, the ballet’s creators, and as a result of their resistance the meaning of the work and its cultural significance has been utterly transformed.

De lezing duurt ca. 45 minuten, gevolgd door 30 minuten discussie en een receptie.

Op 16 december volgt er om 14:30 een openbaar interview en discussie getiteld “Catching Up with Richard Taruskin” aan het Conservatorium van Amsterdam (Oosterdokskade 151) over historische uitvoeringspraktijk, volkselementen in hedendaagse muziek, gevolgd door een uitvoering van de Sacre du Printemps voor quatre-mains piano. Op 17 december is er om 15:00 in het Orgelpark (Gerard Brandstraat 26, Amsterdam) een paneldiscussie onder leiding van prof. dr. Hans Fidom over improvisatie en de uitvoeringspraktijk van nieuwe muziek met bijdragen van organist Willem Tanke en pianist Ralph van Raat. Tot slot geeft prof. Taruskin op 18 december om 16:15 een colloquium aan de Universiteit Utrecht, in de Sweelinckzaal van Drift 21, getiteld “Liszt and Bad Taste”. Studenten en medewerkers van de Universiteit van Amsterdam zijn van harte uitgenodigd voor alle bovenstaande evenementen. Masterstudenten en promovendi kunnen deze lezingen ook volgen in het kader van een masterclass van 2 ECTS bij het Huizinga Instituut, voor meer informatie en registratie zie Masterclass Richard Taruskin


Richard Taruskin is hoogleraar Muziekwetenschap aan de Universiteit van California, Berkeley, en is een van de meest toonaangevende en spraakmakende muziekwetenschappers van de afgelopen decennia. Hij is de auteur van de imposante Oxford History of Western Music (2005) en heeft vele invloedrijke publicaties over Russische muziek, nationalisme, modernisme en muzikale uitvoeringspraktijk op zijn naam staan, waaronder Text and Act (1995), Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions (1996) en Defining Russia Musically (1997). Met zijn regelmatige bijdragen in onder andere de New York Times en New Republic is hij bovendien een prominente stem in het publieke debat over klassieke muziek.

27/10/2014

Tenganan Pegringsingan: Between Mirror and Make Up

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap 
Citra Aryandari 

November 13, 15:30-17:00
Universiteitstheater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

Tenganan Pegringsingan is a desa adat (village of custom) located in the east of the Indonesian island Bali. Myth has it that the land of Tenganan Pegringsingan was bestowed by Dewa Indra (deities) to Wong Paneges (people) for their loyalty and intelligence. Records dating back to the 11th century note that these ancestors of the Tenganan people tended the village, its lands and natural resources with great care, securing continuity of life not only for themselves, but also for their descendants. Indeed, today, Tenganan’s situation is not significantly different from the one described in the legend.

However, since the tourist industry hit Bali in the 1960s, the Tenganan people have earned their living not only from the inherited natural resources, but also from the tourists from outside Tenganan. This paper, based on extensive fieldwork in Tenganan Pegrinsingan, explores the impact of this on the way in which the Tenganan people carry out their rituals, notably Usaba Sambah, the biggest ritual that lasts for a month, and Mekare-kare, or pandan war. Tenganan people are not particularly interested in the ideology or history behind their ceremonies. For them, the most important thing is that the ceremony is done. Still, for the tourists and other entertainment purposes, they ‘traditionalize’ themselves and beautify their rituals through excessive jewellery, thick make-up and theatricality, with the intention to impress the tourists and make them believe that Tenganan is a village of rich people passionate to preserve their tradition. By focusing on the present-day practice of rituals, the paper aims to provide insight into changes of Tenganan society at large.

19/10/2014

MA Graduate Conference 2014

Friday 24 October, 14:00-17:00
Oudemanhuispoort, room F 0.02


Programme:

14:00-14:30 Pieter van Vliet
14:30-15:00 Anneke van Woerden
15:00-15:15 Tom Wolfs
15:15-15:30 Break
15:30-16:00 Sybren Woudstra
16:00-16:30 Mira Withers
16:30-17:00 Erik Spronk

Abstracts


Pieter van Vliet
Everything is coming together: the interrelationship between repetitiveness, modern (recording) technology and music in 21st-century electronic dance music

This thesis focuses on the interrelation between repetitiveness, (recording) technology and the practice of music by closely looking at the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) Ableton Live 9. Live, as it is often called, is the most common software to produce electronic dance music. Ableton’s repetitive nature is extraordinary suitable for producing electronic dance music and offers the possibilities of producers performing their produced music in a live situation: the software ‘blends’ two separate spheres – the sphere of the music-producer and the sphere of the DJ – and gives the opportunity for computers to vividly participate in the live performance of music.

During the presentation certain aspects of the thesis will be further examined. First of all we’ll discuss the concept of electronic dance music (further referred to as EDM), recording technology and repetitiveness: the main subjects of this thesis. We will discuss the historical position of Ableton Live within the history of audio recording and technological/compositional innovations during the 20th century. Secondly we’ll have a closer look upon Ableton Live’s position within electronic dance music and how it shapes the musical practice of live-performance in the 21st century. We will do this by closely examining live performances of producers Pantha du Prince and Nicolas Jaar.

The first case, Pantha Du Prince’s performance of Elements of Light, will give us more insight in how technology offers the producer the opportunity to participate in a live performance as a vivid, improvisational musician, bringing the possibilities of a studio to the stage. Most important is the relationship between the DAW and the ‘conventional’ instruments during the performance.

The second case, focusing on Nicolas Jaar’s stance towards electronic music’s aesthetics, will relate to the problem of authenticity within EDM. Jaar, probably unintentionally, shows how the ‘upcoming new practice’ (meaning: the blurring of DJ and producer and the possibilities of live performance of electronic dance music) gave rise to a demarcation between the ‘honest authentic’ and the ‘dishonest inauthentic’ music.


Anneke van Woerden
Degrees of sampling sound: 3 case studies of Brazilian music

My master thesis, titled “Sampling Sound: How (Some) Brazilian Music Travels”, focuses on the question how sampling contributes to the travelling of Brazilian sounds. Through the focus on the concept of “sound” and the practice of “sampling sound”, I aim to look at what happens specifically on a musical level when sounds travel from one musical context into another.

In this presentation I want to demonstrate different degrees of sampling sound, using three different musical case studies. First of all, I will shortly illustrate the practice of sampling employed within the genre of hip-hop, tracing the sample of “Saudade Vem Correndo” by Stan Getz and Luiz Bonfa into “Runnin’”, a song by hip-hop formation the Pharcyde. Subsequently, I will zoom in on the practice of “sampling sound” and illustrate different degrees of sampling sound through two additional case studies, comparing music of Herbie Hancock to João Donato and Ivan Lins.

In order to explain why and how the music from these case studies show striking audible similarities, I use the framework of “memetics of music” by Steven Jan (Jan 2000, 2007). Taking from him the idea about the importance of separate musical parameters such as pitch and rhythm, I argue that the more, and the more accurate all present parameters are replicated, the closer a musical reference comes to the practice of sampling a sound.  Additionally, not only the sound within the sample, but also the way the sample is placed in its musical context is important. Thus, to truly sample a sound, not only all parameters should be replicated, but their importance and sonic influence should extend beyond their replicated context, matching the overall sound.


Tom Wolfs
Seeing Is Believing: The effect of musicians’ body movements on the valuation of a musical performance 

(Graduation ceremony, but without a presentation of the research.)


Sybren Woudstra
On Three

An important aspect of popular music is metre. The bar, as the underlying metrical concept, can indicate several different measure types. The two that I opposed are the binary and the ternary measure type. I did this to investigate the difference in musical meaning between quadruple and triple metre, because triple metre is, for some reason, much more scarce than quadruple metre. How do three and four relate to each other? And what can be expressed by deliberately choosing one or the other as the basis of musical rhythmical structure? Through interviews with several composers I tried to formulate answers to these questions.


Mira Withers
Possibilian theory of music: a rhizomatic approach to music as consciousness

“Music is perhaps the art presenting most philosophical puzzles”[1], “Is not music as much involved with what is not music as speech is with what is not speech?”[2], “We […] need to exercise ourselves in understanding music rather than robotically theorising it.”[3] We know a lot about music. But what harnesses our imagination is what we don’t know. Exploring the space of an unknown territory is where our questions and problem-posing take shape, actualizing their potential to become new hypotheses, new theories.

Possibilian theory of music is an assemblage of philosophical concepts, scientific ideas and music(ologic)al intuitions employed by a ‘what if’: it constructs a hypothesis of music as consciousness. The premise is to differentiate between ‘music’ created by and bound to our human umwelt, constrained by anatomy, perceptual capacity and culture, and ‘music’ that is a conscious thing on its own, with content, rules and evolution, hence the concept musika is introduced. The paper examines possible windows of understanding through which we could consider the (relative) independence of musika from the single mind, the distinction between musika and music and the basis of their relationship, the working mechanisms of an entity such as musika, its (free) will. In my talk I will focus on a couple of topics, namely Popper’s World3 object’s capacities and Deleuze’s topological map.

[1] Kania, Andrew, "The Philosophy of Music", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/music/ 
[2] Seeger, Charles (1977). Toward a Unitary Field Theory for Musicology. In Studies in Musicology 1935-1975 (pp. 102-137). University of California Press. 
[3] Abels, Birgit (2014, January 24) Cultural Musicology? Paper presented at the Conference on Cultural Musicology at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.


Erik Spronk
Migrerende muziek (presentation in Dutch)

Muziek beweegt. Niet alleen beroert het mensen wanneer die naar muziek luisteren, maar muziek verplaatst zich ook in tijd en ruimte, zowel in actieve als in passieve zin: mensen nemen muziek mee op hun reizen over de wereld en via virtuele en imaginaire werelden kan muziek ook steeds sneller nieuw publiek bereiken. In de etnomusicologie is dit dynamische en ruimtelijke aspect tot op heden onderbelicht gebleven; de norm was om muziek “in de culturele context” te bestuderen en te analyseren. Diverse voorbeelden van kruisbestuivingen in de muziek tonen inmiddels aan dat deze visie op niet-westerse muziek niet altijd opgaat. Daarom moet de vraag worden gesteld hoe (niet-westerse) muziek dan wel kan worden bestudeerd, op een manier waarbij het bewegende aspect van muziek wordt meegenomen en dit tevens praktisch uitvoerbaar is. Om dit te kunnen bereiken zullen er ideeën die gerelateerd zijn aan het bewegen van culturen en muziek en afkomstig zijn van andere vakgebieden binnen de geesteswetenschappen worden geïntroduceerd en toegepast op de muziekwetenschap, waarbij er ook oog is voor de ontwikkelingen in de musicologie zelf. Deze theorie zal worden geïllustreerd aan de hand van enkele voorbeelden van hybride en dynamische muziekvormen die zich over de wereld bevinden, waarvoor een literatuurstudie zal worden uitgevoerd. Op deze wijze zal worden getracht een bijdrage te leveren aan de ontwikkeling van de culturele muziekwetenschap als vakgebied binnen de musicologie.

25/09/2014

Voicing, Listening, and Public Feeling: from fado to canção de protesto in Lisbon, Portugal

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap
Lila Ellen Gray

October 16, 15:30-17:00
Universiteitstheater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

For many participants in Lisbon’s fado worlds, the term fadista refers to both one who sings and one who knows how to listen; through listening one enters into the affective, poetic, and performative sound world of fado, mind, body and soul. In Lisbon’s fado scenes, speech and song, performances of the everyday (like telling a story), heightened performances (like getting up to sing a fado during an amateur fado session), and mediatized performances, interanimate one another. Listening can also be considered as a type of performance signaled on its own continuum of markedness, by its own rituals and repetitions.  This continuum of the voice sounding and its relationship to forms of public listening and public feeling as manifest in the Portuguese musical genres of fado and canção de protesto (or protest song), forms the focus of this presentation.  The first part of the presentation draws on ethnographic research I conducted on fado performance and reception in Lisbon, Portugal during the first decade of the 2000s, some of which is the basis for my book, Fado Resounding: Affective Politics and Urban Life (Duke University Press, 2013)This research spanned diverse and overlapping Lisbon sites and social worlds (museums and archives, professional fado venues, tourist restaurants and small amateur bars, fans of the late fado diva Amália Rodrigues) but it is primarily grounded in ethnographic work on amateur fado practice and sociality. The final section of the talk draws on a portion of my current research, which examines the musical and cultural responses to the financial crisis in Portugal, focusing on a re-emergent register of voicing (and participatory listening) through the highly politicized genre of canção de protesto. I position this in relation to the stereotypical complaint register of the fado voice, historicizing these registers, while asking questions about their labors and viabilities in the present.

21/09/2014

A Tool of Remembrance: The Shofar in Modern Music, Literature and Art

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap
Kees van Hage

September 25, 15:30-17:00
Universiteitstheater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

The shofar or ram’s horn, like the menorah and the Star of David, is a central symbol of Judaism. In the Hebrew Bible, it is the most mentioned instrument: it announces the revelation of the Ten Commandments, it calls for religious rituals, it is heard in the exhortations of prophets and it gives the signal for battle. In the Bible, however, the shofar is only rarely a musical instrument. In the prayer books for Rosh Ha-Shanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), the shofar produces a wordless continuation of prayer, and therefore is considered a ritual instrument instead of a musical instrument.

By the end of the 19th century, writers, composers and artists changed their way of looking at the shofar and thanks to their work, the venerable ram’s horn was given a second youth; it made an artistic turn to music, literature and art, revealing its unexpected artistic abilities, without forgetting its religious past.

A Tool of Remembrance, the first scholarly monograph on the shofar, explores the use and meanings of the shofar as a traditional religious symbol in the new, secular context of modern music, literature and art, where the instrument is no longer subject to restrictions of place (the synagogue), time (the liturgical year) and authority (halakhah), and where it is directed to general, not exclusively Jewish audiences of listeners, readers or viewers, who are not aroused to action or repentance, but invited to experience the artists’ personal interpretations of Jewish traditions.

02/09/2014

Jazz Beyond Borders congres, 4-7 september

4-7 September vindt het driedaagse Jazz Beyond Borders congres op het conservatorium van Amsterdam; de derde in een serie grootschalige internationale jazz-congressen georganiseerd door de Rhythm Changes onderzoeksgroep, met keynotes van Steven Feld (Jazz cosmopolitanism in Accra) en John Gennari (Blowin' Hot and Cool: Jazz and its Critics) en maar liefst 95 presentaties.

Voor meer informatie over het programma en registratie, zie www.rhythmchanges.net.

Balinese Gamelan Semar Pagulingan speelklaar in Universiteitstheater


Vanaf 1 september 2014 is de Opleiding Muziekwetenschap van de Universiteit van Amsterdam de trotse gebruiker van een zeldzame zeventoons Gamelan Semar Pagulingan van het Indonesische eiland Bali. De gamelan is onlangs opgesteld in de kelder van het Universiteitstheater aan de Nieuwe Doelenstraat met uitzicht op de Amstel. 

De gamelan zal ingezet worden voor reguliere onderwijsactiviteiten van de Opleiding Muziekwetenschap en voor workshops. Balinese gamelans zijn in tegenstelling tot Javaanse gamelans nauwelijks tot niet aan Europese instellingen voor hoger muziekonderwijs te vinden. De opleiding Muziekwetenschap zal zich dus sterk maken voor de mogelijkheid om wetenschappers, musici en studenten van Balinese muziek uit andere delen van de wereld toegang te geven tot de gamelan. De wereldwijde reputatie die de UvA geniet op het gebied van onderzoek naar muziek in de Indonesische archipel kan hiermee gecontinueerd en versterkt worden. 

Semar Pagulinganorkesten waren belangrijke statussymbolen voor Balinese vorsten – ze zijn vernoemd naar Semara, de god van de liefde, en dienden bespeeld te worden in een speciaal daarvoor ontworpen hof binnen het paleis, de semarabawa, wanneer een vorst bij zijn eega sliep. Het is niet verwonderlijk dat de specifieke samenstelling van instrumenten die een Gamelan Semar Pagulingan kenmerkt, geroemd wordt om haar milde en verfijnde klank.





10/05/2014

Performing the Orient: Edward Said’s Aida

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap
Wouter Capitain

May 15, 15:30-17:00
Universiteitstheater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

Since the publication of Edward Said’s essay on Verdi’s Aida, the relations between this opera and its colonial context have been much debated. Although these relations are usually approached from a historical perspective, I will argue that it is necessary for musicology to reflect on the contemporary position Aida in operatic performance. More specifically, I will consider how racism continues to affect performances of Aida. Therewith, I attempt to bridge the presumed (and semi-institutionalised) binary between cultural and historical musicology by arguing that, at least concerning methodologies, no fundamental distinction can or should be made between the two subdisciplines. Indeed, historical musicology might be more cultural than it pretends to be, whereas cultural musicology is actually much preoccupied with historical contextualisation.

08/04/2014

‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’: Hooks, Repetition, and Our Musical Memory

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap
Dr. John Ashley Burgoyne


April 17, 15:30-17:00
Universiteitstheater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

Why are we able to remember some pieces of music for decades while other pieces of music seem to slip away no matter how many times we hear them? There is little consensus in the literature. Some theories suggest that a single, striking moment is sufficient – call it the ‘one time only’ hypothesis – while an alternative ‘one time more’ hypothesis suggests that repetition and return are essential to crafting a ‘hook’ in any genre. To test this hypothesis, we have undertaken a large and innovative experiment in the form of an iOS game during the Radio 2 Top 2000 broadcasts. Over 1500 people played the game, yielding more than 120 000 data points. In this talk, I will explain the experiment in more detail, who participated, and what we think it tells us about the workings of long-term musical memory.

25/02/2014

Sounding Stereotypes: Construction of Place and Reproduction of Metaphors in the Music of Goran Bregović

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap
Dr. Aleksandra Marković

March 20, 2014, 15:30-17:00
Universiteitstheater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

In her recently defended dissertation, entitled Sounding Stereotypes: Construction of Place and Reproduction of Metaphors in the Music of Goran Bregović, Aleksandra Marković explores the labelling of the Balkans in the popular/world music market. Goran Bregović successfully markets his music by tapping into well-known stereotypes about the Balkans, construed over centuries and in various realms as Western Europe’s antipode. A related pillar of his international image, next to the Balkans, is his representation of Roma and his identification with the romanticised image of Gypsies. Through discussing recycling and collage as Bregović’s main compositional techniques, this talk also deals with the musical features of Bregović’s “Balkanised” sound.

05/02/2014

What does it mean to have a “good ear”?: Transfer of learning from musical training to perception of audio-visual materials

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap
Dr. Makiko Sadakata

February 20, 2014, 15:30-17:00
Universiteitstheater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

A growing body of evidence demonstrates the enhancing effect of musical training on various cognitive skills, such as social interaction skills, working memory, and general IQ. This talk will focus on a specific case among these, namely, enhancing effect of musical training on an ability to perceive non-musical sounds. The first half of the talk will present a cross-linguistic experiment demonstrating that musicians are more accurate in discriminating various linguistic features. The second half will ask the question of what it means to have such a “good ear” in our daily-life multi-modal communication. It is well known that information of both face and voice contributes to our perception. What happens if you are good in perceiving information of voice here? Our recent findings will be presented and discussed.