On Mediation and Dialogue: MPSG 2024 Conference Report
by Rafael Echevarria
Conferences are impossible to review. Spoilt for choice by up to four parallel sessions, no single person could possibly cover everything at the RMA Music and Philosophy Study Group’s 2024 conference, held on July 11 and 12 2024 at King’s College London. This review, therefore, necessarily comes from my individual perspective, grounded in the nineteenth century and modernity, with a particular concern for critical theory and music analysis. Its challenge, emblematic of the conference writ large, is to listen to others in pursuit of dialogue: between music and philosophy, between different intellectual and cultural traditions, and ultimately between different people.
By bringing together two disciplines, the conference foregrounds questions of mediation. Rather than yielding an established foundation, music’s ontology constitutes unstable, contested terrain. Its multiplicity courts disagreements amongst musical scholars, who integrate its historical, analytical, and cultural dimensions in different ways. These tensions are further compounded by philosophy, which brings its own methodologies, assumptions, and values. This conference demonstrated different ways these myriad perspectives and traditions coalesce. For Georgina Born, the first keynote, conflicts emerge between empirical data and philosophical theory. Bridging this gap, Born drew on Bergson, Husserl, and Deleuze to challenge conceptions of musical materiality and temporality. By infusing Husserl’s concepts of ‘retention’ and ‘protention’ with cultural concerns, Born examined how historical dialogues and transformations unfold in the genre of Jungle Drum and Bass.
Mediation also occurs between different art forms and senses, as highlighted by the session ‘Music, Sensation, and the Multisensory’. Iain Campbell explored how Deleuze’s account of painting reframes music’s ephemeral materiality, while Kuo-Ying Lee’s lecture-recital examined the synesthesic connection between sound and colour in the piano works of Amy Beach and Alexander Scriabin. One exceptional presentation – my personal favourite of the conference – was Arabella Pare’s self-critical reflections on her relationship with the piano’s resonant body. Responding to aspects of Born’s keynote, Pare blended her artistic expertise with Husserlian phenomenology and empirical experimentation to interrogate her sense of ‘oneness’ or ‘twoness’ with the piano.
The mediation between music and society was crucial for the Frankfurt school and its associated critical theory. For Adorno, such mediation was intimately linked with music analysis, which examines how social relations are sedimented within technical details of musical material. Integrating analysis and philosophy was central for the Society for Music Analysis’s associates session: two presenters (myself and Sarah Moynihan) interrogated Adorno’s ‘material theory of form’ while Michael Spitzer explored Peter Sloterdijk’s conceptions of ‘spheres’. Moynihan explored how Sibelius’s tonal and formal language constructs and problematises nature; similar ecological questions were raised by Spitzer, with Sloterdijk reframing our relationship with fellow human beings and the world (think ‘spheres of influence’ and ‘atmosphere’). These debates exemplified ongoing attempts to link historical discourses to contemporary issues. In the next session, entitled ‘Modernity and Critique’, Emily Shyr discussed Adorno’s account of Schubert while Cristina Parapar addressed Marcuse’s attitude towards black music, thereby confronting critical theory’s relevance for more recent popular culture.
The Frankfurt school emerged from a wider stream of nineteenth-century Austro-Germanic thought, which occupied a significant portion of my conference experience: two sessions addressed the philosophies of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Schleiermacher, as well as Wagner, Hanslick, and Schoenberg. Once again, intersections between musical and philosophical ideas were paramount; I was especially intrigued by Kristopher Hilbert, who used Nietzsche’s discussion of the ear – as an organ for listening – to reframe his genealogical and bodily concerns. Noteworthy also was Alexander Wilfing, who corrected longstanding myths surrounding Hanslick which still plague contemporary scholarship. Hanslick’s establishment of aesthetics as a specific discipline especially concerned with beauty is often considered ahistorical and apolitical. However, Wilfing argues, Hanslick does not deny the role of history and politics in other musical disciplines, revealing further nuances throughout his oeuvre. Beauty, history, and politics were also central for Nick Zangwill, the second keynote, who sparred with Richard Taruskin regarding textual, musical, cultural, and even bodily meanings in Bach’s sacred cantatas. Despite the works’ religious dimensions, Zangwill argued that beauty and aesthetic judgement remain relevant – even for the non-believer – and included a welcome defence of music analysis.
Of course, philosophy extends beyond this Austro-Germanic tradition, and this multiculturalism was evidenced throughout the rest of the conference. Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin and Katherine Butler Schofield juxtaposed the American Susanne Langer with the Indian Sushil Kumar Saxena, while Alexander M. Cannon discussed phenomenology and colonialism through the Vietnamese philosopher Trần Đức Thảo. Analytic philosophy was represented in an associate session by the British Society of Aesthetics, highlighting the ongoing importance of topics such as the ‘sublime’ and the ontology of the musical work. Other sessions addressed, inter alia, politics, ethics, performance, vocality, improvisation, and even the cyborg. So many sessions, so little time.
With all these different voices, who do we listen to? Although conferences are usually hermetically sealed and insularly restricted to academics, this boundary is not so fixed. Navigating KCL’s Strand building, conference attendees regularly intersected with building renovations and visitors for other events. The sounds of construction and even a concert at the neighbouring Somerset House would regularly leak in. Confronted by external ‘noise’ beyond anyone’s control, speakers were forced to raise their voices while audiences strained to listen. However, rather than bracketing the noisy outside – the ‘real world’ – what happens if we instead directed our attention to it? This was a central issue for Vijay Iyer, whose final keynote interrogated universalist constructions of ‘music’ and ‘philosophy’: who gets to count as ‘we’? Who is excluded when these categories are created? Who creates these categories? Beyond mere conceptual squabbling, Iyer foregrounded how these constructions confront wider political debates surrounding social justice and decolonisation.
Dialogue is difficult, and listening even harder. Echoing Édouard Glissant, Iyer warned against hasty attempts at unity by embracing the ‘small differences’ between people and the philosophical musicalities of Ornette Coleman and Alice Coltrane-Turiyasangitananda. With Iyer’s provocative and contemplative close to the conference, question time was skipped in favour of post-conference drinks. This tension – between curated Q&A and more informal conversation – foregrounds a conference’s true intellectual and social value. I suggest that the most important exchanges do not occur within a single session – no matter how stimulating any given paper or question may be – because it generally attracts people who already share similar interests. Instead, the real dialogue unfolds in coffee break conversations or conference drinks, when we can meet a broader range of people and create connections across sessions. Having gathered academics from such different walks of life, I wish we had more time to interact and listen to one another. With such packed two days, breaks felt brief and fleeting, particularly when sessions ran overtime. Naomi-Waltham Smith’s Early Career Researcher session, for instance, occupied a lunch slot and felt all too transient. Rather than marginalising this valuable professional development, it should perhaps be a more central part of MPSG discourse. A plenary on career and broader institutional issues may be worthwhile, particularly considering the committee’s establishment of an EDI working group and its general desire for socio-political change.
The conference committee deserves particular praise for successfully running such a rich and stimulating conference. The MPSG provides a valuable space for discussing music and philosophy. More importantly, it serves an important social function by connecting so many different scholars. To construct this academic community – enabling more meaningful dialogue and change – the MPSG must negotiate complex socio-political and intellectual dynamics. These are difficult challenges, but I am optimistic that the MPSG can confront them and look forward to their future solutions.
