香港六合彩

Workshop programme

13.30鈥�13.40: Welcome by Tom Stern (Professor of Philosophy, 香港六合彩, and Vice-Dean for Interdisciplinarity, Faculty of Arts & Humanities)

13.40鈥�14.40: Keynote lecture听
Joseph Acquisto (Professor of French, University of Vermont, USA):听鈥楪etting the Questions Right: Music, Intuition, Intelligence, and Memory鈥�
Introduced and chaired by Patrick Bray (Professor of French, 香港六合彩)

14.40鈥�15:00: break

15:00-16:00: Panel discussion
1.听听 听Emily Kilpatrick (Professor of Music, RAM)听
鈥樷�淚 believe it had to be said鈥�: Maurice Ravel and the construction of musical identity, 1912鈥�14鈥�
2.听听 听David Evans (Reader in French, University of St Andrews)
鈥楳atrilineal Composition and the Canon, or, Writing Motherhood in Song with Claire Delbos and C茅cile Sauvage鈥�
Chaired by Daria Chernysheva (recently completed PhD in Creative Critical Writing and PGTA in French, 香港六合彩)

16:00-16:30: Conversation between Alex Hills (RAM) and Tom Stern (香港六合彩) about composing new music inspired by Proust

16:30: End of event

Please note that this is an in-person only event. Please register to attend:听

Supported by听Music Futures, 香港六合彩 Institute of Advanced Studies,听香港六合彩's听Centre for French and Francophone Research听and听

Please also join us on Thursday 12 October at 6.30 pm for 鈥楳usic History According to Marcel Proust鈥�, a concert featuring Proust-inspired compositions by Alex Hills (RAM) alongside 20^th-century French chamber music, taking place at the David Josefowitz Recital Hall, Royal Academy of Music.听

Abstracts

Joseph Acquisto:听鈥楪etting the Questions Right: Music, Intuition, Intelligence, and Memory鈥�

The early twentieth century was an eclectic time for thinking about music, featuring many competing and influential accounts of how we could or should listen to music.听 Many of what would become the central preoccupations of 20^th and 21^st-century work on that question were present in germinal form at the dawn of the century.听 While Eduard Hanslick鈥檚 notion of absolute music was still highly influential, emotion also played a major role in accounts of musical listening, and newly nascent developments in psychology were then added to the mix.听 Could psychological approaches stand alongside the esthetics and metaphysics that had guided thinking about music in the nineteenth century, or would it supplant them?听 Above all, I will argue, the early twentieth century is a time of concern not just with answers but with getting the questions right.听 My test case example will be Lionel Dauriac鈥檚 Essai sur l鈥檈sprit musical; I will suggest that, in 1904, he sets up an approach to asking questions about musical listening and its relation to emotions and intelligence in ways that resonate with Marcel Proust鈥檚 approach in the years to come.听 Together, they set the stage for new ways of thinking about musical listening that still inform, preoccupy, and perplex us today.

Emily Kilpatrick:听鈥樷�淚 believe it had to be said鈥�: Maurice Ravel and the construction of musical identity, 1912鈥�14鈥�

Ravel鈥檚 slim output of musical criticism, produced almost entirely across two eventful years, is notable for its rather perfunctory observations on actual performances, and its compensatingly lively perambulations through musical history and practice. Since his public d茅but fifteen years earlier, Ravel himself had been a continual focus of polemical debate, his music continually appropriated to serve diverse (and sometimes conflicting) critical and aesthetic narratives. In these articles, we see the composer attempting, for the first time, to shape those narratives on his own terms. This paper explores Ravel鈥檚 musical criticism in the context of his concurrent musical endeavours, and the broader landscape of French musical thought.

David Evans:听鈥楳atrilineal Composition and the Canon, or, Writing Motherhood in Song with Claire Delbos and C茅cile Sauvage鈥�

The names of violinist/composer Claire Delbos and poet C茅cile Sauvage are usually associated with Olivier Messiaen, since both were central to both his life and his work. Delbos was Messiaen鈥檚 first wife 鈥� it is to her that his song cycle Po猫mes pour Mi (1935) is dedicated 鈥� and he frequently insisted in interviews upon the formative role played by Sauvage, his mother, in nurturing his poetic and artistic sensibilities.

In this paper, I shift the critical focus to the work of these women by studying two sets of songs by Delbos, 笔谤颈尘别惫猫谤别 (1935) and L鈥櫭俶e en bourgeon (1937). The latter shared a premiere with Messiaen鈥檚 Po猫mes pour Mi in April 1937, but has not received anywhere near as much attention since. All the poems set by Delbos were written by Sauvage, her mother-in-law: 笔谤颈尘别惫猫谤别 was an unpublished volume left unfinished at the time of Sauvage鈥檚 death in 1927, while L鈥櫭俶e en bourgeon, an extraordinary collection published in 1910, was written while Sauvage was pregnant with Messiaen, her first child. In a compelling parallel between the two women, Delbos was also pregnant with her first child, Pascal 鈥� Sauvage鈥檚 first grandchild 鈥� while she was setting Sauvage鈥檚 poems to music. In these texts, maternal pride in creation, and delight at a profound connection with the irrepressible generative force of nature, is tempered by a painful sense of postpartum loss and grief for the child鈥檚 mortality.

This interdisciplinary paper was prepared collaboratively by myself, a literary scholar, and a musicologist, Prof. Stephen Broad (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland). We trace the dialogue between the two women as it emerges from close readings of Delbos鈥檚 song settings, which offer an intriguing reflection on modes of female creation and creativity in the early twentieth century.