Von: pjvcmr@gmail.com via cec
Datum: Mon, 1 Aug 2016
Betreff: [cec-c] (CFP) Experiments in Music Research, 9 December
Experiments in Music Research
Reassessing Pierre Schaeffer’s Contributions to Music and Sound Studies
9 December 2016
Department of Music, University of Birmingham
Patrick Valiquet, organizer
The Traité des objets musicaux(Treatise of musical objects) is the
central theoretical text for the loosely-defined ‚acousmatic‘ school of
composers that spun off from Pierre Schaeffer’s quarter century of
research for the French public broadcaster, first as director of the
Groupe de recherche de musique concrète (GRMC), and later with the
Groupe de recherche musicale (GRM). Now, fifty years after its original
publication, Schaeffer’s work is finally beginning to appear in English
translation. At the same time, his carefully wrought meta-language for
the relationship between human listening and musical sound is
increasingly being tested as a conceptual resource for musicology and
sound studies more generally.For all his notoriety, however, it is
remarkable how little critical attention has yet been paid to the
anatomy and genealogy of Schaeffer’s thought. Engagement with
Schaeffer’s ideas, in English especially, has been unevenly focused on a
small portion of his eclectic conceptual repertoire, and mostly written
from a microscopic perspective that favours putting his system to work
over understanding its historical and intellectual implications.
Meanwhile, histories of experimental and electronic music have typically
emphasized Schaeffer’s work as an engineer and composer over the
theoretical project which he considered his highest achievement.
A closer reading of the Traité complicates such reductions. The book is
both a prolegomenon to experimental composition, and an exploration of
the implications of a musical pluralism brought about by an expanding
global mediascape. His concern was not simply with studying listening as
a phenomenon or with prescribing specific listening practices, then, but
with repositioning listening as the foundation of all musical
discipline: from the savoir faire of his solfège, to the analytical
attention of his ‚music research‘. Any critical reevaluation of
Schaeffer’s work should thus be situated not only in relation to the
history of electronic music, but also in relation to the history of
musical listening and its representation in musicology and sound studies.
This one-day conference invites new critical readings of Pierre
Schaeffer’s work. Its goal is to reassess the position of Schaeffer’s
theory in the history of musicology and sound studies, its proximity to
contemporary concerns in the study of listening and auditory culture,
and the implications of engaging with its terminology and epistemology
outside of the acousmatic tradition. While previous Schaeffer
scholarship has largely maintained a prescriptive focus on the
composition and reception of musique concrète, this conference seeks to
amplify the dialogue between Schaeffer’s theory and other disciplines.
It is timed to precede the appearance of the English translation of the
Traité, and will thus set the agenda for future research in the field.
Possible topic areas include, but are not limited to:
the Traité des Objets Musicaux as a historical document
the Traité, the GRM, and acousmatic music as cultural institutions
comparative readings of Schaeffer’s theory with that of his contemporaries
critical re-readings of the Traité’s taxonomies
Schaeffer’s work as a media personality, novelist or essayist
Schaeffer’s philosophy of science and technology
the Traité as an analytical or compositional resource for non-acousmatic
repertoire
Schaeffer and the theory of interdisciplinarity
Schaeffer’s work from the perspective of music psychology and cognitive
science
Schaeffer’s work from the perspective of ethnomusicology and auditory
culture studies
applications of Schaeffer’s ideas to the cinema and visual media
language, speech, and semiotics in the Traité
Abstracts of up to 300 words should be sent to patrick.valiquet@ed.ac.uk
by 30 September 2016. The conference will take place in the Department
of Music at the University of Birmingham on 9 December 2016, and will be
free to attend. A limited number of small travel stipends are available
for doctoral students and early career researchers. Please indicate your
intention to apply for a stipend when you submitting an abstract.
Selected presenters will be invited to contribute to an edited volume of
essays to be published after the conference.
Experiments in Music Research is presented in collaboration with Scott
Wilson, director of the Birmingham Electroacoustic Sound Theatre,
University of Birmingham, and with the support of the Institute of
Musical Research, Royal Holloway, University of London.