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MUSICOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM

25/11/2016

From Craft to Profession: The Case of the Conservatory

Colloquium Musicology
Michiel Schuijer, Conservatorium van Amsterdam

Thursday 15 December, 15:30-17:00
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

Abstract
The word ‘conservatory’ – or ‘conservatoire’ in BE – denotes an institution that offers (mostly) professional education in various musical disciplines. This type of institution – which originally operated under sacred authority, and served charitable causes – was newly defined within the culture of the Bourgeoisie, where it had to supply the demands of a rapidly growing secular musical life. With musical excellence being needed in ever-larger quantities, it aimed to establish general qualifications for musicians and imposed certified standards on teaching practices and examining procedures. Its model was the Conservatoire national de musique et de déclamation founded 1795 in Paris.

In this paper, I propose to view the conservatory from the perspective of the rise of professionalism in civil society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a process that has led to fundamental changes in the structure and status of occupations. This process has been studied extensively, not only in general but also with reference to specific occupations and/or specific countries. Music, too, has been the subject of such research, which naturally involved the role of conservatories.

However, the factors that have shaped conservatory curricula over time need more systematic and extensive exploration. From the very beginning, conservatory policies have been fraught with multiple tensions. These seem to have resulted from incongruities between the traditional foundations and practices of music education, the evolving general standards of professional education, and the volatile expectations in the market place. The paper will pinpoint these tensions and show how different conservatories have dealt with them.


Michiel Schuijer is head of research and study leader of the Department of Composition, Conducting and Music Theory at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. He studied music theory at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague and musicology at Utrecht University. In 1999 he co-founded the Society for Music Theory, and from 2007 through 2011 he was editor-in-chief of the Dutch Journal of Music Theory.

Schuijer focuses his own research at the juncture of music theory and historical musicology. His book Analyzing Atonal Music: Pitch-Class Set Theory and Its Contexts was published in 2008 by University of Rochester Press. Now he is working on a project that addresses the European conservatoire as a social and cultural phenomenon.

24/10/2016

Listening to Architecture: The Concert Hall as a Medium of Musical Culture

Colloquium Musicology
Darryl Cressman, Maastricht University

Thursday 24 November, 15:30-17:00
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

Abstract
Concert halls are designed for attentively listening to music. To guarantee that the listening experience mediated by these buildings is acoustically correct, architects rely upon mathematical formulas to measure and predict how a building will sound. Armed with these formulas, they are able to experiment with unconventional concert hall designs without compromising sound.

The achievements of modern architectural acoustics are a valorization of the mathematical formulas used to predict acoustics. Indeed, the development of a predictive theory of architectural acoustics by Wallace Sabine in 1900 has been celebrated as the beginning of a new era of understanding sound and acoustic design. But, overlooked in this scientific triumphalism are the musical standards and expectations that shape the acoustic design of buildings for music. Sabine’s formula transformed our understanding of how music behaves in an enclosed space, but it did not change our understanding of how music should sound in these spaces.

Examining the history of Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw (opened in 1888) demonstrates how, in lieu of an acoustic formula, musical culture, especially ideas about listening, influenced ideas about acoustics and acoustic design. Exploring the designs for the Concertgebouw proposed by architects, patrons, and musicians reveals that prior to quantification, acoustics were more closely aligned with musical and aural discourses.

Darryl Cressman is an assistant professor in the Philosophy Department in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences at Maastricht University. He received his PhD from the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in 2012. He is the author of Building Musical Culture in Nineteenth-Century Amsterdam: The Concertgebouw (University of Amsterdam Press) and has published research in the fields of sound studies, the philosophy of technology, science and technology studies, and media history.

24/09/2016

Blowing Gabriel Out of the Clouds: Jazz and the Afterlife

Colloquium Musicology
Prof. dr. Walter van de Leur

Thursday 20 October, 15:30-17:00
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

Abstract
The afterlife is a site of many fantasies, and it figures in numerous jazz narratives. Biographies and documentaries unproblematically present the likes of Armstrong and Coltrane as saints or angels, who after fulfilling their mission on earth have rejoined their creator. Often the concept of immortality is played out in overt religious terms. Jazz in heaven—and sometimes in hell—is a trope that drives many jazz jokes, but it seriously is the hook of Howard E. Fischer’s documentary jazz film They Died Before 40: ‘The greatest jazz band in history has been playing in heaven for more than 50 years!,’ the promotional blurb trumpets. For the film, different iconic recordings of Stardust have been digitally spliced to produce a tune ‘recorded in heaven’ by a band ‘organized in heaven’; apparently real recordings from the Hereafter have not materialized so far.
     Jazz fans who are not sure they will get to see the heavenly band perform, can opt for a final resting place in the Jazz Corner at Woodlawn Cemetery (The Bronx, New York), where more than 2,000 mausoleum and burial plots went on sale in 2014, for ‘lovers of jazz who are anxious to spend eternity near to the legends they have loved in life.’ According to cemetery executive director David Ison, the plots sold out quickly: ‘It’s absolutely incredible ... we allotted several sites just behind Miles Davis and they’re almost all gone.’
     In this paper I will look at jazz and death, and the fantasies that the ‘most live music performed in the here and now’ calls up when jazz greats die. The narratives surrounding the passing of musicians reflect how fans, critics and historians have understood and understand jazz and its practitioners. Myths about either the triumphant successes of larger than life immortals or the lonely sufferings of tragic geniuses reveal various assumptions that feed into ideas about what sets jazz apart from other musics.

Jazz-musicologist Walter van de Leur received his Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam (UvA), and teaches at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam (CvA), where he is Research Coordinator in the Jazz and Classical Master’s programs, Jazz historiography electives teacher in the Jazz Master’s program, and Music History teacher in the Jazz Bachelor’s program. On behalf of the CvA, he is Professor of Jazz and Improvised Music at the UvA. He has published in a variety of peer-reviewed academic journals and edited volumes as well as in non-academic journals. Two book manuscripts are currently in process, one on the reception of jazz in Europe, and one on jazz and death.

12/09/2016

Reasoning through Art: The Articulation of Embodied Knowledge

Colloquium Musicology
Prof. dr. Henk Borgdorff

Thursday 22 September, 15:30-17:00
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

Abstract:
My contribution will start with asking whether research by artists, so-called artistic research, is equivalent to academic research. Artists in their research often make use of insights, methods and techniques, which stem from social science, humanities or technological research, but it is not clear what artistic research itself has to offer to academia. In my talk I will develop a positive understanding of research in and through the arts, touching upon its epistemology and methodology, and addressing the form and relevance of its outcomes. I will point to four related issues that are pertinent to research in and through art: an advanced understanding of discursivity, of reasoning; the methodological relevance of material practices and things; innovative ways of publishing art in academia; and advanced forms of peer review. This will be illustrated by the workings of the Journal for Artistic Research and its associated Research Catalogue. Besides, it is key to the advancement of the artistic research field that we not only advertise and export our epistemological and methodological distinctiveness, but that we also join forces with others in our attempt to re-think academia.

22/04/2016

Impresario in Cold Wartime: Nicolas Nabokov’s Music Festivals, 1951-1961

Colloquium Musicology
dr. Harm Langenkamp

Thursday 19 May, 15:30-17:00
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

Abstract:
Around 1950, when the members of the anti-Nazi alliance found themselves locked into a political and ideological stalemate that none of them could afford to escalate into another ‘hot’ war, the Truman administration found itself facing a challenge for which it was ill-prepared: stemming the seemingly irreversible success of Moscow’s overtures to nonaligned intelligentsias the world over. Part of Washington’s answer was the facilitation of the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), a global coalition of men and women of arts, letters, and science that took it upon itself to counteract Soviet propaganda by promoting the value of freedom. Against all expectations, the post of the CCF’s secretary-general went to Nicolas Nabokov, an outspoken émigré composer of prominent Russian descent with a zest for anti-Stalinist rhetoric and politics. In this capacity, Nabokov organized a number of large-scale festivals and conferences which convened musicians, composers, music critics and (ethno)musicologists on an agenda of common interests and concerns.

This lecture assesses the strategies, ambitions, successes, and failures of Nabokov’s musical enterprises, in particular the 1961 East-West Music Encounter in Tokyo. Admirable for all the adversities Nabokov had overcome, at the height of the Vietnam War his projects were compromised by revelations about the CCF’s secret benefactor: the Central Intelligence Agency. For all the questions these revelations raise about the notions of cultural autonomy and apolitical cosmopolitanism that informed the CCF’s politics, this paper resists quick and easy condemnation, suggesting that the embrace of these notions as well as the resort to secrecy was at the time of the CCF’s foundation (June 1950) the only strategy through which a cultural counteroffensive of a serious scale could be mounted.

21/03/2016

The Musical Imaginarium of Konishi Yasuharu, or How to make Western music Japanese

Colloquium Musicology
dr. Oliver Seibt

Thursday 21 April, 15:30-17:00
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

Abstract:
“J-Pop” or “J-Rock”, the labels used to designate Japanese popular music, self-consciously claim the successful domestication of two Western music genres. But how were these Western musics made Japanese? How did Japanese musicians succeed to convince an international audience of the unique qualities that distinguish J-Pop and J-Rock from contemporary genres of Western popular music?

The work of Konishi Yasuharu, former head of the internationally acclaimed J-Pop duo Pizzicato 5, gives an idea of the general importance of a relevant dimension with regard to the production and consumption of music that is often neglected in the study of global popular music flows.

19/02/2016

Resilience, precarity and counter publics in Beyoncé’s audiovisual oeuvre

Colloquium Musicology
dr. Kristin McGee (University of Groningen)

Thursday 17 March, 15:30-17:00
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

Abstract
In an age of self-fashioning, audiovisual music performances, as meta-texts, remain powerful vehicles for promoting neoliberalism’s resilience discourse. Currently, pop stars commandeer not only top down media, but more informal platforms to promote their celebrity status and consequently alter the terms of musical performativity. In her self-titled video-album Beyoncé (2013), super star Beyoncé challenges the conventions of both film and music genres to promote her resilient artistic voice while expanding her international celebrity status. Her recent work also elevates the status of music video as the essential facet of the new visual album genre. This presentation conceptualizes Beyoncé’s self-fashioning as both artistic engagement with the public sphere and as a continuation of the repetitive performance aesthetics of an increasingly dominate black music ideal. Ultimately Beyoncé exploits old and new media to perpetuate her mega star status; yet her multifaceted artistic oeuvre prompts non-essentialist corporeal negotiations of black culture, which productively contribute to recent debates about feminism and sexuality within the music industry.

19/01/2016

Elvis has finally left the building? Boundary work, whiteness and the reception of rock music

Colloquium Musicology
dr. Pauwke Berkers

Thursday 18 February, 15:30-17:00
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

Abstract
Music genres are constitutive of social boundaries as they are often structured along ethno-racial lines. Since Elvis Presley in the 1950s, rock music has been appropriated by whites, edging out non-whites from this music genre – the so-called Elvis Effect. Drawing on two ongoing studies with Julian Schaap, this presentation focuses on how music critics as well as audiences draw ethno-racial boundaries in rock music.

First, using content analyses of professional and lay reviews, our analyses show evidence of social marking: (1) the presence of ethno-racial markers e.g., “Black singer”; (2) the extent to which such markers crowd out aesthetic classifications, e.g. focusing on ethno-racial similarities instead of aesthetic differences; and (3) the way in which ethno-racial markers affect the rating of the album, as unmarked artists are arguably rated as superior.

Second, making use of the innovative subjectivity-based visual Q-methodology and post-sorting interviews, we will demonstrate how (1) non-white musicians are habitually marked as opposed to the unmarked white (male) norm; (2) non-white artists are both seen as tokens and role-models, revealing how difference can function as a double-edged sword; (3) discourses of color-blindness, color-consciousness and ironic minimization are employed to discuss ethno-racial inequality.