Stewart House, 32 Russell Square, London (Room ST273)
Mondays, 10.30 am - 5.30 pm
This national scheme, originally set up with AHRC funding and now run by the IMR, is aimed at PhD students but is also open to those taking Master's programmes. Specialist tutors from across the UK provide an insight into current research questions, debates and methodologies across an exceptionally wide spectrum of musical research, while also addressing some of the important practical challenges research students face.
Each day school consists of three complementary seminars designed to explore the relationships between different approaches to musical research. The London programme will be complemented by one or more regional research training day schools and workshops and by the Research Training Reading Group (new for 2010/11)
Each London day school will follow the same timetable:
Coffee/tea from 10.30
10.45 - 11.15 am Welcome and convenor’s introduction
11.15 - 12.45 Seminar 1
12.45 - 13.45 Lunch break
13.45 - 15.15 Seminar 2
15.15 - 15.30 Coffee/tea break
15.30 - 17.00 Seminar 3
17.00 - 17.30 General discussion and close
Registration
The fee for each day school is £20 but this is reduced to £10 per day for IMR Student Associates. To become an IMR Student Associate costs £10 per year.
IMR Student Associates application form
Hardship Fund for travel costs
The IMR has established a Hardship Fund for Research Training In Music London day schools to which students may apply individually for assistance with travel costs, normally up to 50% of the cost of an individual trip. If you wish to apply please email music@sas.ac.uk with relevant details including the approximate cost of attending the day school(s).
TERM 1
25 October
Music and Social Meanings: socio-historical and interdisciplinary approaches to newspapers, letters, broadcast media, BBC and national archives
Convenor: Ann van Allen-Russell (Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance), with Jenny Doctor (University of York) Sophie Fuller (Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance), and Leanne Langley (Goldsmiths)
Leanne Langley “Empirical methods, interpretative skills: Themes in the economic and social history of music in Britain”
Ann van Allen-Russell “Musicians and the Law: legal documents as a source for economic, social and cultural issues in the music business”
Jenny Doctor “Detecting social issues of performance through sound technologies: identifying and accessing surviving materials”
Sophie Fuller “Letters, diaries and presumptions - the case of Adela Maddison (1863-1929)”
Jenny Doctor and Sophie Fuller : “Reading Letters - the Maconchy Williams correspondence (1927-1977)”
The day will focus on a range of raw materials that can be tapped for new information about musical culture in Britain from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, raising possibilities for how musical production, reception and meaning might be argued. Case studies presented will explore methodologies for the analysis of an array of primary source material including account books, letters, diaries broadcasting, press sources, concert programmes and legal documents.
1 November
Crossing Borders: cultural identity, anthropologies of music, socio-political perspectives, an ethnomusicological approach to history
Convenor: Rachel Beckles Willson (RHUL), with David R M Irving (Cambridge) and Katherine Schofield (KCL)
David R. M. Irving "Are Global Histories of Music Possible?"
Katherine Schofield "Ethnomusicology and Indian History: Interstitial Perspectives on Pleasure"
Rachel Beckles Willson "Boundaries and border-crossings after Said"
The day will begin with genealogies of music histories and a critique of some problematic critique of some problematic boundaries between contrasting conceptual frameworks. Central to discussion throughout the day will be potential exchanges between theories of ethnomusicology and historical musicology, as well as music's relationship to 'history proper'. Case studies presented will relate to the globalization of music since 1500, the place of pleasure in 16th-17th-century Mughal society, and the scholars' individual methodologies for the analysis of primary source material. The figure of Edward W. Said will be a thread running through all presentations, and will be examined at the end of the day in the specific area of his post-mortem presence in Ramallah.
15 November
Music, Narrative, Image: narrative, imagery, representation and meaning
Convenor: Julie Brown (RHUL), with Robert Samuels (Open) and Holly Rogers (Liverpool)
This Research Training Day will consider some of the ways in which images interact with music.
Robert Samuel (Open University) will consider how music, considered as a semiotic system, can come to have the power to create narrative. What in music are the equivalent of words in a language? If narrative is a complex effect created through the articulation of many words together, are equivalent effects possible in music? Some recent research in music and narrativity will be considered as responses to these and related questions.
Julie Brown (RHUL) considers the relationship between music and moving images. How does music function in film? Does it hold the same relationship to the moving images in all types of film? What about silent film? Taking a piece of current research into silent film music as a starting point, this session considers some of the particular dilemmas facing those studying the sounds of silent film exhibition, and relates these to those of later film music.
Holly Rogers (University of Liverpool) will suggest that single-authored work in experimental film and video art rests at the intersection between the spatially expanding disciplines of music and art in the Twentieth Century. What happens when filmmakers create both the music and image in their work? This session will make particular reference to the theories of performance practice, audiovisuality and intermediality.
TERM 2
31 January
Performance Studies: psychology of performance, analysis through and in performance, historically informed performance
Convenor: Elaine King (Hull), with Julian Hellaby (Coventry) and John Irving (IMR)
What is performance studies about, aside the obvious notion that it involves the study of performance? The aim of the day will be to discuss and showcase different perspectives on the study of performance so as to reflect the scope and flexibility of research as well as to embrace the variety of methods used in previous and current performance-based projects.
Historical Approaches to Performance (John Irving)
In January 2008, John Irving recorded a selection of solo harpsichord sonatas by composers resident in Salzburg in the mid 18th century on a German single manual harpsichord dating from 1764 in the Russell Collection, University of Edinburgh. A variety of research contexts (including historical performance practice issues and aspects of the recording and editing process) will be discussed and extracts from the CD played.
Analytical and Philosophical Approaches to Performance (Julian Hellaby)
This presentation will review some of the ways in which musical performance has been investigated by musicologists and philosophers. Using selected quotations from key players in the field, issues such as Werktreue performance, theoretical analysis as basis for performance, performance as musical work, personal authenticity, semiotics - and others - will be discussed. The talk will conclude with an explantion of the speaker's own recently published theory which embraces not only the work and the performer but also the analytical listener.
Psychological Approaches to Performance (Elaine King)
This talk will consider the ways in which psychologists have studied music performance over the past several decades, focussing on cognitive, social and developmental perspectives. As well as defining the scope of research, the talk will draw upon key issues about methodology, including empirical design, the interpretation of data, and the relationship between theory and empirical work. King will highlight these issues through discussion of a case study about team roles in ensemble rehearsal and performance.
14 February
Music and Literature: interdisciplinarity, narrativity, metaphors
Convenor: Holly Rogers (Liverpool), with John McGrath (Liverpool), Helen Abbott (IGRS/Bangor), Delia da Sousa Correa (Open) and Peter Dayan (Edinburgh)
Holly Rogers and John McGrath (School of Music, University of Liverpool): The difficulties of inter-disciplinary research; a discussion of music as metaphor, intermedia, literary soundscapes and modernist narratives.
Helen Abbott (French, Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies London & Bangor University): What working with performers tells us about literature and music - an exploration of the challenges of practice-led research
Dr Delia Delia da Sousa Correa (English, The Open University): 'Literary research and music'.
Prof Peter Dayan (Literature, Languages and Cultures, The University of Edinburgh): A consideration of "the essential difference between examining specific instances of collaboration between the arts, and examining the consequences - for the concept of art itself - of collaborations between the arts".
7 March
Interpreting Musical Sources: textual criticism, editorial method, scholarly and performing editions, 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century sources
Convenor: John Rink (Cambridge), with Neil Heyde (RAM), and John Butt (Glasgow)
This Day School has been conceived for musicologists, performers and composers. The three seminars draw upon the diverse experiences of the respective presenters in considering what sources mean in the context of different composers’ work, how they might be interpreted both musicologically and in performance, how the presenters have gone about preparing editions of the music in question, and how students handling similar sources (whether manuscript or printed) might learn from the examples that are adduced. The principal aim is to introduce students to a number of methodological approaches so that they gain a better idea of how to proceed when confronted with similar materials.
Sources for Bach and Handel
John Butt, University of Glasgow
Seminar 1 explores the ways in which the sources for these two parallel composers differ in terms of the information they contain and the intentionality they might reflect. Moreover, how we use them might vary according to whether they are being studied for the purpose of making a scholarly edition, performance or understanding the 'existential status' of the music concerned. Performance that purports to be historically informed makes heavy demands on sources, demands that are often incompatible with the variety of things they might tell us; indeed, the challenge might lie in the framing of our demands in such a way that the performance possibilities are genuinely enhanced rather than limited by a misguided quest for incontrovertible accuracy.
Turning the Key in / to Performance
John Rink, University of Cambridge
Seminar 2 begins by describing the role that scores play as performances take shape over time. The examples that follow show how an overreliance on musical notation, particularly when interpreted in terms of inferred intentions on the part of the composer, may constrain the performer and thwart the creative potential that it might otherwise inspire. Finally, ‘realisations’ of various case-study pieces by Chopin are offered, along with comments on historical performance issues as well as matters of instrumental projection and performative identity.
Debussy and Fauré: Editorial Practices and Composer-Performer Relationships
Neil Heyde, Royal Academy of Music
Seminar 3 explores editorial practices in a number of pieces by Debussy and Fauré, drawing on recordings, early and recent editions, corrected proofs, manuscript sources and verbal material to unpack the complexities of the processes involved. The aim is to provide models for how the particular issues arising in this music can be approached editorially, and to suggest ways in which the inevitably fragmentary sources require a hypothetical envisioning of the creative processes involved. Especially close attention will be paid to issues of string performance practice.
21 March
Practicalities of PhD Study: ethics, viva preparation and survival, getting published
Convenor: John Irving (IMR), with Laudan Nooshin (City), and Rachel Cowgill (Liverpool Hope)
Laudan Nooshin: 'What do you think you¹re doing?' Research Ethics and the Music PhD Student
Most doctoral students in music embark on research out of a love for the subject and because they have a special interest in a particular area.
However, whilst there has been an increased awareness of ethical issues in recent years, relatively few stop to consider such issues in relation to their research. But ethical issues confront us all, particularly - but not only - those working with living ‘subjects’: musicians and others involved in music-making. Starting with a number of case studies, this session will encourage students to think about some of the issues which arise around questions of representation (who has the power to represent whom?), ownership (who does the music belong to anyway?) and appropriation (who has the power/right to do what with it?). Many of these questions relate to issues of power and whose voice becomes privileged in the research process.
What responsibility, if any, do we as scholars have towards those we write about and their music?
John Irving: Approaching the PhD viva
A terrifying prospect? A doddle? Perhaps neither of those two extremes is true for most of us. But how do you handle this situation? What are examiners trying to test in this strange meeting? How might you prepare suitably for it? How do you give a good account of yourself and your work? This session will look at these and other issues and will aim to include an opportunity for some interactive viva preparation in a low pressure environment!
Rachel Cowgill: Reaching Your Public: From Viva to Publication
When, what, and where to publish after the PhD is an important decision to make. What makes a good article? How do you go about securing a book contract? How do peer-review processes work? And what are publishers and editors looking for in new work? This session explores what's involved and highlights some of the factors to consider in getting your work out to the right readership.
