Two public lectures will be given by Dr Paulo de Assis as follows:

 

Monday 28 November 2016, 6 pm to 7 pm

Lecture Recital Room, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Silk Street, London
EC2Y 8DT (book at
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/guildhall-researchworks-7588084359)

Guildhall ResearchWorks series, presented in association with the Institute
of Musical of Musical Research and the Cambridge Centre for Musical
Performance Studies

 

Tuesday 29 November 2016, 5 pm to 6.30 pm

Robin Orr Recital Room, Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge, 11 West
Road, Cambridge CB3 9DP (no booking necessary).

Performance Studies Forum, hosted by the Cambridge Centre for Musical
Performance Studies

 

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The Emancipated Performer: Musical Rendering Beyond Interpretation

Paulo de Assis (ERC Principal Investigator, Orpheus Institute; Visiting
Fellow, Cambridge Centre for Musical Performance Studies)

 

A close historical survey reveals that the notion of ‘musical
interpretation’ was born only in the course of the nineteenth century, bound
to a specific set of new rules, constraints and expectations. Other words
and other practices were in use before its appearance, and other terms and
praxes might emerge in the future. This talk will offer a brief overview of
the terms used in the past and propose new ones for the future. Situating
the discourse in a post-interpretive horizon of possibilities, it will argue
for an emancipated, liberated and creative mode of performing musical
objects from the past. 

 

More specifically, Paulo de Assis will present his ongoing, European-funded
research project MusicExperiment21, focusing on the subproject Diabelli
Machines – a series of performances, lectures, articles or installations
that operate different forms of problematisation of Beethoven’s Diabelli
Variations Op. 120. Every single instantiation of this subproject questions
the original work, cracking it from inside, disclosing its ruptures, and
reconfiguring it in a different regime of perception and signification.
Beyond historiographical, philological, organological or sociological
investigations, it aims at creatively yet rigorously engaging with the
historically available materials related to Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations
and its compossible futures.

 

So far, the Diabelli Machines has had seven instantiations, including
collaborations with the ORCiM-ensemble, Hermes Ensemble, Ensemble Interface
and ME21 Collective, with seven young composers (Juan Parra, Lucia D’Errico,
Tiziano Manca, David Gorton, Hans Roels, Bart Vanhecke, Paolo Galli), Swiss
choreographer Kurt Dreyer, and a number of special guests such as Valentin
Gloor, Catherine Laws, Stefan Östersjö, William Brooks, Benjamin Widmer and
Mieko Kanno. All versions are documented at
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/302790/302791.