CALL FOR PAPERS/ PERFORMANCES (Reminder)
(Deadline 1 March)
3rd Annual Meeting of the SongArt Performance Research Group, in association with the Institute of Musical Research, London:
2012 Theme: “Lyric Song in Idea and Performance”
Venue: Chancellor’s Hall, Senate House, University of London
Date: Thursday, 21 June, 2012
Keynote Speaker: Professor Amanda Glauert (Royal College of Music)
The SongArt Performance Research Group warmly invites proposals for papers, lecture-recitals, and collaborative workshops for our 3rd Annual Meeting, which in 2012 will take the form of a single-day workshop exploring the theme “Lyric Song in Idea and Performance”.
The workshop offers an excellent opportunity for collaboration, and for the exchange of ideas between practitioners and theorists of song performance, literature, philosophy, theatre, composition, musicology and related disciplines. The workshop will feature traditional papers, combining these with alternate format sessions that will showcase performers and explore the articulation of the lyric in performance.
Research Question: What is the lyric and how do we make it?
Although the idea of the lyric presupposes poetry reaching out to music and music reaching out to poetry, the actual point of lyric intersection between the arts can remain remarkably elusive. Herder defined the lyric as preparing for the moment when we hear the poet’s ‘I
sing’; a lyric must be made and tested through actions of performance and response. Unlike with the drama and the epic, it is hard to lay out the lyric’s generic traits in advance, except perhaps to indicate how it is neither of those two other modes of communication. How then can we make a lyric, or know when it has been made? What models can be found and how might these illuminate the essential art of lyric song performance?
This workshop aims to offer a platform for setting out and testing definitions of the lyric, through discussion of practical models from performers and composers (past and present), and through exploration of their implications for our idea of the lyric as a genre.
The SongArt Performance Research Group
The SongArt Performance Research Group (www.songart.co.uk) is a research arm of the Institute of Musical Research in the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Our group brings together practitioners and theorists of song performance, poetry, theatre, musicology and philosophy with a view to gaining new insights into the practice and ontology of song performance that will be relevant across disciplines.
Our associate musicians, poets, actors, composers, performance studies researchers and academics collaborate on a range of independent but related performance research projects, which are linked by our commitment to three core priorities: 1. to gain a fuller understanding of “lyric” potential of poetry in performance and its connection to effective song creation for performers; 2. to study the experience of live song performance in concert with a view to identifying key attributes of the interior of the performative act for research and pedagogical purposes; and 3. to investigate the “Art,” or the “making,” of songs in concert by poets, composers, performers and audiences as a potentially joint enterprise.
Guidelines for Proposals
Proposals (maximum 500 words) are invited for papers (20 minutes), lecture-recitals (30 minutes) and collaborative workshop sessions (45)
Please include a short biography (maximum 200 words) for each presenter.
Please submit proposals via email as a Word document attachment to:
postbox@songart.co.uk
Please address any enquiries to Dr Kathryn Whitney at:
mail@kathrynwhitney.net
The deadline for receipt of proposals is 1 March, 2012.
We regret that we cannot cover expenses of invited speakers and
performers.
Further information:
The SongArt Performance Research Group: www.songart.co.uk
Institute of Musical Research: www.music.sas.ac.uk