Musical encounters: Studies in relational musicology
Nicholas Cook FBA
1684 Professor of Music, University of Cambridge
British Academy Wolfson Research Professor 2014-2017
May 12th, 19th, 26th, June 2nd
Senate Room, Senate House, University of London, 5.30-7pm
This lecture series borrows its title from Nicolas Bourriaud's 'relational aesthetics', the idea that some forms of art are best understood in terms of the social relationships they forge between its spectators. I see this idea as applicable to music in general, and understand such relationships as encompassing all musical events, whether face-to-face or distributed in time and space. Beginning with what I call the relational practices of music—such as its role in therapy and conflict transformation—I explore how music conditions social relationships and affords constructions of identity, in both historical and contemporary contexts and in both the real and virtual worlds. Particular areas that I explore from a relational perspective include cross-cultural interaction, examining ideas of encounter and influence from the Hindostannie air to Debussy and the gamelan; creativity, long thought of as an individual faculty but better understood as social process, whether in the real-time interactions of group performance or the symbolic interactions of compositional imagination; and the world of the Viennese classics, interpreted not in terms of the retrospective construction of individual subjectivity that gave rise to musicology as we know it, but rather from a social and relational perspective that renders even the most familiar of music unfamiliar.
May 12: 'Socialities'
May 19: 'Influences'
May 26: 'Creativities'
June 2: 'Classics'
Attendance by (free) registration only. Early registration is advised, as space is limited. Please go to https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/imr-distinguished-lecture-series-2016-tickets-22450510080.
In association with the School of Advanced Study.
Seminars for Research Students with Professor Nicholas Cook
Room 261, Senate House, 3-4.30pm
The lectures on May 19th, 26th, and June 2nd will be preceded by research seminars with Professor Cook. For further details, please follow the link below.
Research students wishing to participate are asked to sign up on a separate event/registration page, which can be accessed here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/imr-distinguished-lecture-series-2016-research-student-seminars-tickets-22492517726
Institute of Musical Research
Senate House
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HU
