City, University of London - Music Department Research Seminar Series - Autumn Term 2017
ALL WELCOME!
Next Seminar:
Wednesday 1st November, 5.30-7.30pm
Room AG09, College Building (ground floor) St John Street, London EC1V 4BP
Caroline Potter (IMLR, University of London):
‘Music not to be listened to: a recently discovered Erik Satie/Max Jacob collaboration'
Abstract
Erik Satie’s concept of musique d’ameublement (furniture or furnishing music) ensures that he is viewed as a precursor of minimalism, muzak, and many other 20th-century musical genres. The concept can be traced to his early career as a pianist in Montmartre cafés, where he accompanied singers and shadow plays. Satie developed musique d’ameublement in Montparnasse during World War I in collaboration with other artists.
This talk examines the concept and meanings of Satie’s furniture music, focusing on the entr’actes he composed for Max Jacob’s play Ruffian toujours, truand jamais (1920), a novel fusion of theatre and music. The play is unpublished and was believed lost, but it has recently come to light in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Speaker
Caroline Potter is a writer and lecturer who specialises in French music. A Visiting Fellow of the Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR), University of London, and consultant to the AHRC-funded Baudelaire Song Project, she has published books on Satie, the Boulanger sisters, and Dutilleux. She is a frequent broadcaster and was Series Advisor to the Philharmonia Orchestra's 'City of Light: Paris 1900-1950' season. Her latest book, Erik Satie, a Parisian composer and his world (Boydell Press, 2016), was named Sunday Times Classical Music Book of the Year.
Forthcoming talks this term, at 5.30-7.30pm in the same venue:
15/11/2017 Teresa Fraile (Universidad de Extremadura): Rave in Spain: Exchanges with the United Kingdom in the popular music of the sixties
29/11/2017 Úna Monaghan (University of Cambridge): Experimental Practices in Contemporary Irish Traditional Music
http://www.city.ac.uk/arts-social-sciences/music
http://blogs.city.ac.uk/music/
http://www.city.ac.uk/
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