Late breaking information

MUSICOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM

21/11/2015

Bass, Grain, Resonance: Vibrational Studies of Electronic Dance Music

Colloquium Musicology
Dr. L.M. Garcia

Friday 11 December, 14:00-15:30
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

Abstract: 
This lecture sets out to explore the tactilization of sound in electronic dance music as well as significance of vibration and resonance in emic understandings of sonic affect. Sonic tactility offers an important sensory-affective bridge between touch, sonic experience, and an expansive sense of connection in dancing crowds. Electronic dance music events tend to engender spaces of heightened tactility and embodied intimacy, and so it no surprise that their musical aesthetics also highlight tactility. In track-titles, lyrics, and other text-based media surrounding this genre, “feeling” is often deployed in a polyvalent manner, highlighting the conceptual overlap between emotion, affective knowing, perception, and touch. This bleed between modes of feeling extends into the sound of recordings themselves, which use vibration to engage with tactile, haptic, and kinaesthetic senses in addition to hearing. 

This analysis of sonic tactility focuses on “house” and “techno” styles of electronic music, especially the “minimal” continuum of sub-styles that were in ascendancy during the first decade of the twenty-first century. These styles invoke tactility through a range of modalities, including percussive bass “beats” and highly "granular" sonic texture (à la P. Schaeffer). This sonic tactility leads to a further examination of the role of vibration and resonance in popular electronic music scenes. Drawing from ethnographic interviews as well as recent "EDMC" research, this lecture will show how emic notions of "vibe" and "sync" provide compelling accounts of sonic affect through phenomena such as sympathetic resonance, entrainment, and attunement.

30/10/2015

Vitry in the Rhineland? A provisional report, and some methodological considerations

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap
prof. dr. Karl Kügle

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

The ontological status of Philippe de Vitry (1291-1361) escapes easy classification even more than that of his contemporary, ‘secretary-poet-musician’ (Leach 2011) Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300-1377). Vitry personally might have seen himself first and foremost as a cleric, pursuing a career that led him from studies at Paris University into service to two noble houses within the extended French royal family (Bourbon and Valois), culminating in his appointment as bishop of Meaux (1351-61). Having fulfilled relatively straightforward functions for his aristocratic patrons at first, including legal counsel and notary, he acquired important posts within the Valois administration following Philip of Valois’s accession to the French throne (1328), at the same time serving as royal propagandist, diplomat, and tutor to Philip’s children. Hailing (probably) from Artois, his own family included several brothers also active in French politics. He befriended the likes of Petrarch and of Pierre Roger, archbishop of Rouen, later Pope Clement VI (1342-52), possibly one of Philippe’s student friends. He was a scholar of music, theology, and astronomy, an early humanist, a poet working in Latin and Old French, a singer, and – last but not least - a composer. His reputation extended far beyond France into England, Italy, Central Europe and Cyprus, and endured well into the fifteenth century. His fame was revived by musicologists who see him as one of the key instigators of the so-called ‘ars nova’.

Against such a background (‘data-poor’ but exceptionally rich in hermeneutic possibilities), any additional material coming to light acquires unusual importance. In my paper, I shall review the state of Vitry research today, then introduce a new source I discovered recently in the Middle Rhine region of Germany. I conclude with some methodological considerations: How to grasp the complexities of a past where even the word for music (musica) means something different from what it means to us?

21/10/2015

MA Graduation Conference Friday 23 October

On Friday 23 October, the recent graduates from the MA Musicology UvA will present their research for their fellow students, family, friends, and anyone interested. After the presentations, students will receive the certificate for the MA Musicology. The location is room 1.01A at the University Theater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, Amsterdam.

Full program:

9:45-10:15 Meagan Hughes  -  Music and Peacebuilding in Northern Ireland
10:15-10:45 Fabian Westzaan  -  Volharding in de Progressieve Muziekpraktijk. Over het activisme van Orkest de Volharding van 1972 tot 1983

10:45-11:00 break

11:00-11:30 Belle Edelman - Musical Recall: A Study on Transmission
11:30-12:00 Tim Ruijgrok - Dissonant Views on Consonance (presentation in Dutch)

12:00-13:30 break

13:30-14:00 Geraldine van Gelder  -  Lamentaties van Palestrina en Lasso
14:00-14:30 Rebecca Erickson - A Filmic Sound Atlas

14:30-14:45 break

14:45-15:15 Aart Appelhof  - Eduard Hanslick en programmatische muziek
15:15-15:45 Laura Jonker  -  Bang on a Can-ism. Postminimalism, totalism and the music by Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe (presentation in Dutch)

15:45-16:00 break

16:00-16:30 Marloes Schuurman - Gender, muziek en islam. Vier case studies over Marokkaanse zangeressen in Nederland
16:30-17:00 Jurre Thuijs - Pitch Anticipation: a study of glide tone perception

02/10/2015

Music notation as technology and material culture in the performances of the ICP Orchestra

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap
Floris Schuiling

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

This talk presents some of the results of an ethnographic study of Amsterdam-based improvising collective the Instant Composers Pool Orchestra, taking their notated repertoire as inspiration for formulating a new approach to music notation after the performative turn in music scholarship. The ICP, founded in 1967 by Misha Mengelberg, Han Bennink and Willem Breuker and still performing, is one of the longest consistently performing groups in improvised music. Influenced by free jazz, experimental music and performance art, founding member Mengelberg composed a diverse repertoire of pieces that construct different possibilities for improvisation and creative interaction in performance.

In such an improvised context, it seems pointless to approach these pieces as ‘representations’ of the music they play. Rather than such a binary relation between text and performance, I draw on the work of anthropologist Alfred Gell (1992, 1998) to describe them as technologies, mediating social and creative agency of performers in a wider network of mediating relations between musicians and their instruments. While a critical attitude to the centrality of the work in musicology has been vital for the performative turn, this formulation of the role of notation in a model of distributed creativity is intended to develop a positive understanding of notation and its role in the construction of musical cultures and socialities.

09/05/2015

The Perception and Computation of Music Similarity in Electronic Dance Music

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap
Dr Aline Honingh (researcher at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, UvA)

25 June, 15:30-17:00
Universiteitstheater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, zaal 3.01

"I just love this song, do you know other songs like this?" "What do you mean? Songs with a similar rhythm, or being similar otherwise?"

When is a piece of music similar to another piece of music? And do people agree on this? These are important questions in research on music similarity. Music similarity is a popular topic in the field of computational musicology, but still not well understood.

Since music can be studied by looking at different aspects like melody, rhythm and timbre, music similarity might be studied by studying so-called `sub-similarities’ like rhythm similarity and timbre similarity. In this presentation we focus on rhythm and timbre similarity in the context of Electronic Dance Music (EDM). Since rhythm and timbre are the two most important musical dimensions in EDM, one can wonder whether, by modeling rhythm and timbre similarity, the concept of general music similarity can be modeled from this as well. In addition to these models, we will look at an experiment in which similarity scores were given by listeners. With these scores, the models can be evaluated, and we can learn more about how people rate (rhythm/timbre) similarity.

In a collaboration with company Elephantcandy, an app based on timbre and rhythm similarity was developed, and will be presented at the colloquium.

17/04/2015

The Ever-Present Noise of Sound: On the Inevitability and Necessity of Noise in Recorded Sound and Music

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap
Melle Kromhout (PhD candidate at ASCA)

21 mei, 15:30-17:00
Universiteitstheater, Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, zaal 3.01

In my PhD-project on the role of noise in recorded sound and music, I aim to provide an alternative to existing views on noise that continue to consider it in terms of its transgressive or subversive potential as the sonic “other.” Through a methodological approach largely influenced by media archaeology or, more broadly, so-called German Media Theory, I develop a theoretical framework that enables a thorough revaluation of the fundamental importance of noise for assessing the meaning of music and sound in the media age.

In this talk I will first provide a general overview of the main questions and aims of my ongoing research. Secondly, I will present two case studies of specific sound technologies that provided the foundation for my larger thesis: an analysis of noise reduction technologies in analogue recording practices makes the case for the inevitability of noise; next, the analysis of the practice of “dithering” in digital sound processing shows how noise can even be considered necessary. I will close my presentation with some preliminary thoughts on the further development of the project.

14/03/2015

Staging and Negating Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron: Representing a Representation of the Unrepresentable

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap 
Dr. Mark Berry (Royal Holloway, University of London) 

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

In this lecture, I shall look at perhaps the most theological of all operas, Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron, with particular reference to its dramatic questioning of the very possibility of artistic, and specifically musical, representation. Schoenberg’s God is unimaginable in the very real sense of it being impossible to make Him into an image. Were the Israelites to succeed in seeing Him, He would no longer be their God. Schoenberg’s conversion to Lutheranism is as important here as his subsequent re-conversion to Judaism. The great Protestant and specifically Lutheran controversy over the Second Commandment, involving Luther’s claim that it applied only to pagans, not to Christians, and its subsequent ejection from the list of ten, its be of importance here. Reformation controversy over iconoclasm fed into the classical German concept of self-cultivation or Bildung, the very word incorporating Bild, or ‘image’. Where, however, does that leave the possibility of musico-dramatic expression?

How, moreover, does such extreme difficulty with respect to the work ‘itself’ translate into staging? Schoenberg’s own stage directions are notoriously unrealisable. Erwin Stein reported, apparently without irony, from the 1957 premiere: ‘In Zurich there was not enough space for displaying the processions of camels, wagons and asses which are supposed to bring offerings to the idol. These tasks as well as the slaughter of cattle and the roasting of meat, which are part of the offerings, will tax the resources of any opera house.’ That, of course, is a practical difficulty, but what of more theoretical concerns, especially in the light of debates concerning Werktreue and Regietheater? Consideration of some productions of Moses und Aron will ask what they have to tell us about representation and its impossibility, and likewise what the work’s confrontation with representation has to tell us about the possibilities, and otherwise, of staging.

02/03/2015

“Eine dürftige Geschichte”; Arminius and the Failure of German Liberation Opera (1815-1848)

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap
Kasper van Kooten

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

Abstract:

This lecture traces the little-known history of German-language operas based on the legendary German warrior Arminius that were composed in the years between 1815 and 1848. Considering the symbolic power of Arminius as a national liberation hero and his omnipresence in nearly all realms of German nineteenth-century culture, his apparent absence on the operatic stage is striking. This absence is even more remarkable when we take into account that liberation heroes were standard fare of many “national” operas elsewhere in Europe. But surprisingly, a closer look at historical sources reveals that during the nineteenth century, there were in fact quite some operas written about Arminius’s legendary battle, which were, however, all relatively unsuccessful or soon sunk into oblivion. Evidently there was something with this story and its operatic realizations that did not fit the mold of German opera or did not meet the expectations of German opera audiences. By formulating an answer to the question why Arminius did not conquer the early nineteenth-century German opera stage, I hope to provide a more profound insight into the nature and vicissitudes of German national opera and its discourse.

27/01/2015

Thea Derks presenteert haar biografie Reinbert de Leeuw, mens of melodie

Colloquium Muziekwetenschap
Thea Derks


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

In 2014 verscheen de biografie Reinbert de Leeuw, mens of melodie, waarin muziekpublicist Thea Derks het muziekspoor volgt van pianist, componist, dirigent en bestuurder Reinbert de Leeuw. Deze heeft veel betekend voor het Nederlandse muziekleven en stond mede aan de basis van de internationaal vermaarde ensemblecultuur. Derks zal haar lezing illustreren met muziekvoorbeelden. 


Reinbert de Leeuw studeerde twee jaar Nederlands aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam alvorens hij zich in 1958 inschreef voor een studie piano aan het Muzieklyceum aldaar. Vanaf 1962 volgde hij tevens compositieonderricht bij de modernist Kees van Baaren aan het Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag. Daar raakte hij bevriend met Louis Andriessen, Mischa Mengelberg, Peter Schat en Jan van Vlijmen, met wie hij het Nederlandse muziekleven danig zou opschudden, bijvoorbeeld met de controversiële opera Reconstructie in 1969. 


Als bestuurder streed De Leeuw met succes voor financiële ondersteuning van componisten en voor structurele subsidiëring van gespecialiseerde ensembles. Hij zette als pianist de vroege werken van Erik Satie en de late muziek van Franz Liszt op de kaart en brak als programmeur een lans voor twaalftoonsmuziek en tegendraadse componisten als Charles Ives en György Ligeti.


Min of meer uit noodzaak gaat hij ook dirigeren en in 1974 wordt hij door studenten gevraagd hen te coachen voor een uitvoering van Schönbergs Pierrot lunaire. Hieruit ontstaat het Schönberg Ensemble, dat internationaal een grote reputatie opbouwt, mede dankzij de intensieve samenwerking met levende grootheden als Olivier Messiaen, Galina Oestvolskaja, Mauricio Kagel en Sofia Goebaidoelina. 


De biografie Reinbert de Leeuw, mens of melodie kreeg lovende kritieken en werd omschreven als een ‘standaardwerk voor de geschiedschrijving van de Nederlandse ensemblecultuur’. 


Na afloop van de lezing is er gelegenheid vragen te stellen en de biografie te laten signeren.