KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Hermann Danuser (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany)
Estelle Jorgensen (Indiana University, U.S.A.)
Richard Middleton (University of Newcastle, UK)
Carl Schachter (New York, U.S.A.)

Professor Carl Schachter (USA)

The Scherzo of Schubert's Piano Sonata in B flat, D. 960: Analysis and Performance

The Scherzo movement from Schubert's last piano sonata has a most unusual reprise. The opening theme comes back in the midst of a phrase that has already returned to the texture and tonic harmony of the beginning, but without returning to the melody until the third bar. This odd situation creates a problem for the performer. To emphasize the thematic return contradicts Schubert's deliberate attempt to bridge over this point of formal articulation. But to play through the return as if it lacked significance seems equally unsatisfactory. Some possible solutions become evident when the performer/analyst realizes that the unusual reprise results from equally unusual features of the Scherzo's large-scale harmonic and melodic structure--features that originate in the opening bars of the movement.

Professor Richard Middleton (UK)

'Performing Culture, Appropriating the Phallus'

According to constructionist theories, all culture is 'performed', that is, specific cultural norms are contingent and only hang together by virtue of the strength and regularity of their enactment. This applies, for example, to gender roles and sexual identities, including in the sphere of musical performance. In rock singing gender and sexual norms are strongly established. In this paper I take a classic 'cock rock' song - Van Morrison's 'Gloria', in the radically revised version recorded by Patti Smith - and explore her performance in the light of a strategy which I take to be an attempt to appropriate the phallus. I do this through a sequence of three analyses, drawing on perspectives from Freud, Lacan and Zizek, respectively, and try to draw out some implications for how we might understand the performance of gender and sexuality in popular music.

Professor Estelle R. Jorgensen (USA)

"This-with-That": A Dialectical Approach to Teaching for Musical Imagination

My point in this paper is to apply my "this-with-that" dialectical approach to teaching for musical imagination, specifically, in the case of the Brahms Intermezzo, Op. 118, no. 2. As an exercise in applied philosophy, I show how this particular philosophical perspective can play out in teaching and learning a particular musical piece. Three questions lie at the center of the analysis: What is meant by my "this-with-that" dialectical approach? How is musical imagination implicated, for example, in a performer's reading of Johannes Brahms' Intermezzo, Op. 118, no. 2? How ought one teach for musical imagination?

I hope this paper will have wide interest to the conference attendees--historians, theorists, performers, and teachers alike.

Professor Hermann Danuser (Germany)

'On the logic of musical reading'

In comparison with 'interpretation', the concept of 'reading' enjoys a Cinderella-like existence in musicological terminology. The aim of this keynote address is to develop some thoughts on the relation of these two categories in music--and specifically in light of the question as to how criteria of logic can be advanced.

My starting point is the significance of musical fluency for both reading and interpretation. A conceptual history of musical 'logic' follows, in which I question the category in relation to a) harmony b) motive and theme c) formal function and d) the opposition between expression and construction. These considerations lead to a plea for a partial logic of musical reading. These general theoretical reflections are then extended and made concrete in light of two case studies: first, with a 'search for traces in Brahms' using the example of the b-minor rhapsody for piano op. 79/1; and second, with some thoughts on the relation between reading, interpretation, and criticism in some 'critical readings' of Glenn Gould