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From: Daniel Leech-Wilkinson <[log in to unmask]>
AHRC Studentship in the study of recordings
The Music Department at King's College London and the British Library
Sound Archive have successfully bid for an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral
Award. We are now inviting applications for a full-time studentship for
three years, or part-time for five, beginning in October 2005.
Rationale and Scope
Performance practice as documented on recordings has become an important
research field in Music recently. To date almost all evidence has been
taken from commercial recordings, which are by their nature heavily edited
and ‘improved’. The British Library contains numerous collections of
private ‘live’ recordings of concerts and rehearsals by major artists, as
yet unprocessed and so entirely unknown to researchers. They offer us the
chance to hear how performances were prepared, and how music – much of it
recorded commercially by the same artists at around the same time –
sounded in the middle of the 20th century when performed live and
unedited. The collections include the work of solo instrumentalists,
choirs, orchestras, conductors, music festivals, and early music groups;
and in every case there is important work to be done, once the contents
have been identified, in interviewing surviving performers and
investigating musical and social contexts. They offer an ideal opportunity
to study performing in the round. Making them accessible and better known
will open up new opportunities for research in a rapidly developing field.
The successful student will be able to choose from among collections
including the following:
* Pierre Boulez - live concerts and BBC studio recordings, interviews,
talks and features.
* Sir Charles Mackerras - live performances and broadcasts.
* Shura Cherkassky - live performances and rehearsals.
* Musica Reservata - tapes of concerts.
* The choir of King's College, Cambridge -- live recordings of services
(1950s-2000).
* The choir of York Minster - live recordings of services (1946-82).
* The English Singers - recordings, documents and cuttings.
* Recordings from the BBC Transcription Service - festivals, series,
interviews and talks.
Supervision
The research student will be jointly supervised by Daniel Leech-Wilkinson
at KCL and Timothy Day at the BLSA. S/he will spend roughly equal amounts
of time working in each institution. At the BLSA s/he will work in the
office area of the Curator, Classical Music, having access to materials
not available to readers, and at both institutions will receive
appropriate training and support.
Funding
The value of the AHRC award is the same as for a normal Research
Studentship (GBP10,000 pa plus London Allowance of GBP2000; an additional
allowance of GBP500 pa payable in April 2006; tuition fees up to
GBP3,085). An additional payment of GBP1000 pa will be made by the BLSA.
Applications
Applications, made to King's College London on the normal application form
(http://www.kcl.ac.uk/pgp05/infolinks/11), should be received no later
than Friday 22 April 2005. Applicants should meet the same qualification
criteria as for any other research studentship in Music, or should be able
to demonstrate equivalent experience. Please include a statement
explaining your suitability for this project, together with samples of
your recent writing on music. You are not expected at this stage to make a
final choice from among the collections listed above, but an indication of
your particular areas of interest would be helpful.
Further Enquiries
Specific questions may be addressed to Daniel Leech-Wilkinson and/or
Timothy Day: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask] A full
project description, taken from the AHRB application, follows.
Project Description
Over the past decade the study of musical performance on record has grown
from a curiosity into one of the most exciting fields of musical research.
A symptom of this, unthinkable a decade ago, is the AHRB Research Centre
for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (of which Leech-Wilkinson
is a Co-Director and Day a member of the Management Committee). CHARM is
providing data resources to make research in performance easier as well as
techniques of analysis that make it possible to study both details and
global features of performance style much more precisely than before.
CHARM is both a symptom and a cause of the sense among musicologists that
the field has huge potential and - just as important - that it offers a
way in which musicology can contribute to an enhanced understanding of how
music is made and enjoyed by a much wider community.
So far, work has been, of necessity, restricted largely to the study of
commercial recordings. In some respects this is not a problem. More and
more of people's experience of music comes via recordings, and if we want
to know how music is typically perceived today, commercial recordings are
good sources of data. Nevertheless, they do not pretend to record
music-making in anything like its natural state. Studio editing
regularises performance, removing flaws and anything that transgresses a
norm. Even commercial recordings marketed as "live" are typically compiled
from several performances and are tidied up. What students of performance
practice need, if they want to study performance with as little editorial
intervention as possible, are unedited recordings, with a simple
microphone layout, of concerts and rehearsals.
Such recordings are commonly made for private use by musicians. The
problem for researchers is access to them. A considerable number of
collections have been given over the years to the British Library. Most
remain unprocessed and are therefore unknown and unused. The first
objective of this project is to catalogue one or more of these collections
(according to size and the aims of the thesis topic). This involves more
than entering details into a catalogue. Accompanying documentation is
typically thin or non-existent, so it is necessary to identify repertoire,
artists, date and location, using concert programmes, diaries, rehearsal
and broadcast schedules, and any other sources that may be available. This
constitutes the British Library's side of the project, providing the
Library with a valuable resource that will permanently enhance its
collections.
At the same time the academic side will already be taking shape, since the
process of getting to know the materials and collecting data on their
biographical, social, business and musical contexts will already be
providing a rich understanding of the relationship between particular
manners of performance and the environment in which they are developed.
Rich contextualisation of this sort has as yet not been provided in any
study of performance analysis, even though its value is clear, and this
study will therefore offer a model of how such relationships might be
explored. The second objective, of equal interest to the Library and the
College, will therefore be to provide a detailed study of the background
to the recordings being catalogued. This may include oral history,
gathered by interviewing surviving participants (whether performers,
promoters, engineers or listeners), and drawing on the expertise available
from the British Library's oral history section within the Sound Archive.
It will certainly include archival research related to recordings and
broadcasts, in which there is expertise within the Sound Archive's
classical music section.
The third objective will be to contextualise the performances themselves
within the work of the musicians concerned and within the continuous
development of performance style and technique. This contextualisation
could be quite general or could focus on one of more very specific
questions. Examples include a study of expressive gestures, the
relationship between live and studio performances (about which
increasingly apocalyptic claims are made without firm evidence of the sort
offered by these collections), changing attitudes to continuity, or any
other issue that the student and supervisors agreed was significant and
worthy of close consideration. The result will be a multi-layered study
that looks at a body of performing work in a more rounded and detailed way
than has yet been practised.
Materials
Collections identified so far as suitable for this project are as follows.
* Pierre Boulez - as conductor and composer during his London years,
especially during his chief conductorship of the BBCSO between 1970 and
1974, including performances with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London
Sinfonietta, and at the Proms; live concerts and BBC studio recordings,
interviews and talks and features programmes documenting one of the
greatest cultural shifts in British music-making of modern times.
* Sir Charles Mackerras - several hundred live performances and broadcasts
from the 1960s to the end of the century from all over the world. This
collection offers the opportunity to study a major conductor and the
developments of his interests (outstandingly Janacek, including some UK
premieres, and historically informed performance on modern instruments of
Baroque, Classical and Romantic repertoires).
* Shura Cherkassky - of live performances and rehearsals by an
international pianist of repertoire he also recorded commercially,
allowing comparisons to be explored.
* Musica Reservata - tapes of concerts, including some repertoire recorded
commercially, allowing a study of the development of the most
controversial and influential of the 1960s early music groups.
* King's College, Cambridge - 170 CDs of privately-made recordings of the
choir from the 1950s to the end of the century. Broadcasts, including
foreign broadcasts, and unique recordings made live at chapel services.
* The choir of York Minster - live recordings of services from the period
when Dr Francis Jackson was master of the music (1946-82).
* The English Singers - one of the first British early music groups,
making the first recordings of English madrigals and Renaissance sacred
polyphony, tied to the research and editions of Edmund Fellowes, and
supplemented by paper records and cuttings.
* Recordings from the BBC Transcription Service - includes the Aldeburgh
Festival since its beginning, the Cheltenham Festival over many years,
historical survey series made by the BBC in the 1950s and 60s (e.g. Denis
Stevens' Music at the Tudor Court). Interviews and talks dealing with
performers and institutions, as yet not studied at all.
Scheme of work
1 month at the British Library Sound Archive looking over the materials
and making a final selection of topic. 3 months at King's studying
commercial recordings by the same artists and reading published studies
relevant to the topic. Then five 3-month stints at the British Library
Sound Archive identifying, classifying and cataloguing the selected
materials, reading documents, studying organisations, personnel,
practices, focussing on exemplary cases; these five 3-month periods
alternating with 1-month periods at King's discussing, sifting, and
organising the materials collected and writing up results in draft. This
accounts for the first 24 months of the studentship. The final 12 months
to be spent at King's reworking existing chapters and completing the
thesis. An appropriate timetable along similar lines, spread over five
years, will be devised for part-time students.
Outcomes
A substantial enhancement of the British Library Sound Archive's online
catalogue. A trained discographer and historian of recordings. A thesis
that sets new standards in its examination of performance in context.
Introductions to and (subject to copyright) samples of the collection,
aimed at a wider readership, published via the CHARM discographical
project website. The prospect of a publication to follow, dealing with a
well-known performer or ensemble and enhancing public understanding of
their work.
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