Music, Marxism, and the Frankfurt School, International Conference Dublin
School of Music, University College Dublin, 2–4 July 2014
Provisional Programme
Registration will open on the afternoon of Tuesday 1 July for those delegates who arrive early.
Wednesday 2 July
08.30–09.00 Registration
09.00–09.30 Words of Welcome and Opening Address, Professor Harry White
09.30–11.00: Session 1: Music at the Barricades
“Fine Utopia: The Legacy of Walter Benjamin in Luigi Nono’s Prometeo (1985),” Pauline Driessen (Ghent University)
“Nono after Jameson,” Joshua Cody (Independent Scholar)
“The Limits of (Musical) Modernism: Critical Responses to 1968 and the Contradictory Relationship between Music and Social Radicalism,” Lauren Freede (University of Oldenburg)
11.00–11.15: Coffee
11.15–12.45: Session 2: Darmstadt and its Echoes
“Ligeti and Adorno: The Letter Correspondence,” Peter Edwards (University of Oslo)
“Material, Language, and Praxis in Adorno’s ‘Vers une musique informelle’: A Contextualizing Approach,” James Archer (Durham University)
“Theodor Adorno’s ‘Vers une musique informelle’: Towards a Re-Conceptualisation,” Joris De Henau (Durham University)
12.45–2.00: Lunch
2.00–3.30: Session 3: The Music of the Other
“The Philosopher’s Bass Drum: Adorno’s Jazz and Metric Regularity,” Maya Kronfeld (University of California, Berkeley)
“Marcuse, Hip Hop, and Revolution,” Dharmender S. Dhillon (Cardiff University)
“A Note on Adorno, Jewish Musicians, and Jewish Musics,” Judah Matras (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
3.00–3.45: Coffee
3.45–4.45: Session 4: Utopian Consciousness
“Bloch and the Musical Aesthetics of Utopia,” Luis-Manuel Garcia (Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin)
“Utopian Currents in Marcuse, Adorno, and Bloch,” David Kootnikoff (University of Alberta)
4.45–5.00: Coffee
5.00–6.00: Keynote Lecture
Professor Max Paddison (Durham University)
Thursday 3 July
09.30–11.00: Session 5: Music and the Work Ethic
“Adorno’s Negative Musical Remainder,” Murray Dineen (University of Ottawa)
“’The Martyrs of Artworks’: Adorno on Virtuosity, Performance, and Musical Labor,” David VanderHamm (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
“Beyond the Autonomy Principle: Adorno, Benjamin, and the Challenges of Today’s Musical Experience,” Alessandro Cecchi (Institute for Music of the Giorgio Cini Foundation, Venice, Italy)
11.00–11.15: Coffee
11.15–12.45: Session 6: Humanism—Secular and Sacred
“Ernst Bloch and the Requiem,” Wolfgang Marx (University College Dublin)
“Reading Adorno’s ‘Sacred Fragment’,” Sebastian Truskolaski (Goldsmiths, University of London)
“Repudiating Darkness?—Brahms, Iphigenie, and the Frankfurt School,” Nicole Grimes (University College Dublin)
12.45–2.00: Lunch
2.00–3.30: Session 7: Adorno’s Schubert
“Adorno and the Negativity of Musical Landscape,” Sebastian Wedler (University of Oxford)
“Promesse de Bonheur: Adorno, Music, and Happiness,” Richard Leppert (University of Minnesota)
“Adorno’s Decay and Schubert’s Fragments,” Arabella Pare (Hochschule für Musik, Karlsruhe)
3.30–3.45: Coffee
3.45–5.15: Session 8: Adorno and Other Marxists
“The Other Marxism: Adorno, Lukács, and the Debate over Materialist Music Aesthetics in East Germany,” Golan Gur (University of Cambridge)
“Re-inscribing Marxism into Adorno: The Work of Hans G. Helms,” Ian Pace (City University London)
“Adorno, Subjectivity, and Collectivity,” Mark Abel (University of Brighton)
Thursday Evening: Conference Dinner
Friday 4 July
09.30–11.30: Session 9—Panel: Ich bin an mir: Reassessing the Musical Thought of Ernst Bloch
“The Speculative Tone,” Michael Gallope (University of Minnesota)
“’Dark as a Gateway’: On Music and Obscurity in Bloch’s Geist der Utopie,” John Hamilton (Harvard University)
“Music and the ‘Fiery Truth’ of Matter,” Benjamin Korstvedt (Clark University)
“The Not-Yet-Conscious and the Epistemological Value of Esthetic Experience,” Beth Snyder (New York University)
“Music and Utopian Ground: Breakthroughs in Adorno, Bloch, and Schelling,” Stephen Decatur Smith (Stony Brook University)
11.30–11.45: Coffee
11.45–12.45: Session 10: Berg’s Adorno
“Adorno, Berg, and Composition with Twelve-Tones: Rereading Adorno’s Philosophy of New Music,” Morgan Rich (University of Florida)
“A Night at the Opera: Benjamin, Adorno, and the Premiere of Wozzeck,” Kevin Mooney (Western University, Ontario)
12.45–2.00: Lunch
2.00–3.30: Session 11: Modes of Listening
“The Beauty is in the Details: Adorno’s ‘Schoene Stellen’ (‘Beautiful Passages’),” Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute)
“Adorno’s Tafelmusik,” David Kasunic (Occidental College, LA)
“The Hörender in Hörigkeit: Adorno (and Foucault) Hearing the Sirens’ Song,” Etha Williams (Harvard)
3.30–3.45: Coffee
3.45–4.45: Session 12: Adorno’s Temporalities
“Concerning Stravinsky’s Philosophy of History: Some Assumptions behind Theodor Adorno’s Theory of Musical Bergsonism,” Eraldo Santos (Bergische Universität Wuppertal / Charles University in Prague)
“Conflicting Times: Adorno’s Interpretation of Stockhausen’s ‘New Morphology of Musical Time’,” Eduardo Socha (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
4.45–5.00: Coffee
5.00–6.00: Session 13: Aesthetics beyond Modernism
“Global Capital and the Stakes of Latin American Musical Modernism,” Stephan Hammel (University of Pennsylvania)
“A Scene is Missing: Ranciére and a Meta-Politics of Music in Rehearsal,” João Pedro Cachopo (New University of Lisbon)
For registration and additional information, go to:
http://www.musicandthefrankfurtschool.com/