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Conference announcement

 

The Musical Body: Gesture, Representation and Ergonomics in Performance

 

Institute of Musical Research, Senate House, Malet Street, London, in association with the Open University, the University of Durham and the Orpheus Instituut, Gent, the University of Sussex, the Royal College of Music and the IMR Music & Science group

 

22-24 April 2009

 

 

The aim of this interdisciplinary conference is to bring together researchers from widely divergent fields to share perspectives on the physicality of performance, and its visual representation, in musics of all kinds. From connections between musical performance and health, and musical performance as dance, to representations of the 'ideal' posture in historical treatises and the lampooning of soloists in caricature, the conference will explore the ways in which music and the body interact, both with ease (such as where composition or improvisation are explicitly ergonomic) and in tension (where physical strain is etched into a musical composition or acts as a marker of authenticity in a performance style). Finally, it is pertinent to consider those areas in which physical ease in performance is either obstructed (eg. via performance anxiety) or results from the creative adaptation of standard practices (eg. as a response to disability).

 

Sessions will be built around themes, with presentations grouped as far as possible in ways that bring together a variety of historical and generic areas of study. The following list of themes and topics is indicative only:

*        Music and health

*        Iconographical representation

*        History of performance style

*        Organology

*        The boundaries of the idiomatic and the ergonomic in composition

*        Entrainment, ensembles and community

*        Gesture and embodied cognition

*        Stage presence and performance anxiety

 

A Call for Papers and Lecture-recitals will be issued in the early autumn.

 

 

Programme committee:

Katharine Ellis (IMR)

Martin Clayton (Open University)

Mieko Kanno (Durham University; Orpheus Instituut, Gent)

Nicholas Till (University of Sussex)

Aaron Williamon (Royal College of Music; IMR Music & Science group)

 

________________________

Prof. Katharine Ellis

Director, Institute of Musical Research

School of Advanced Study

University of London

Senate House

Malet Street

London WC1E 7HU

Tel/Voicemail: 020 7664 4866

www.music.sas.ac.uk <http://www.music.sas.ac.uk/> 

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