Ninth Biennial Conference on Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Cardiff University, 24-27 June 2013
The Ninth Biennial International Conference on Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain will take place at the School of Music, Cardiff University, on 24-27 June 2013.
The keynote speakers will be Professor Simon Goldhill (Director, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Cambridge University) and Dr Leanne Langley (Associate Fellow, Institute for Musical Research, University of London). The conference will also feature a recital of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British piano music by Professor Kenneth Hamilton (Cardiff University). An exhibition of printed editions of music from Cardiff University’s Special Collections and Archives (SCOLAR) will coincide with the conference.
Call for proposals
The Programme Committee invites proposals of no more than 300 words for individual papers of 20 minutes (plus 10 minutes for questions), lecture-recitals of 40 minutes, and round tables of 50 minutes; and proposals of no more than 600 words for panel sessions of four papers (120 minutes in total). Please send proposals to MNCB@cardiff.ac.uk by 15 February 2013. Proposers will be notified of the Programme Committee’s decision by mid-March 2013.
Proposals are welcome on any aspect of musical life in Britain or music by British composers during the period 1800-1914, but the following themes in relation to music are highlighted:
- subversion and innovation
- industry, community, and identity
- historicism, classicism, and antiquity
- myth and memory
- port and resort cultures
- iconography
- cosmopolitanism
In addition, to mark their anniversaries in 2013, papers are welcome on the following:
- British responses to Wagner, Verdi, Alkan, and Mascagni pre-1914
- The (Royal) Philharmonic Society and orchestral music in nineteenth-century Britain
Programme Committee:
Prof. Rachel Cowgill (Cardiff University, Chair)
Dr Christina Bashford (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Prof. Trevor Herbert (Open University)
Prof. Charles McGuire (Oberlin College & Conservatory; NABMSA)
Dr Rachel Milestone (Rose Bruford College)
Dr Aidan Thomson (Queen’s University Belfast)
For further enquiries, please contact the conference chair, Rachel Cowgill
(Email: CowgillRE@cardiff.ac.uk)
For information about Cardiff University see www.cardiff.ac.uk and www.cardiff.ac.uk/music for the School of Music
For tourist information and accommodation in Cardiff see www.visitcardiff.com/
Biographies
Simon Goldhill is Professor of Greek at Cambridge University, where he is also Director of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Director of the Cambridge Victorian Studies Group, and a Fellow of King’s College. He has published extensively on opera, including work on Strauss’ Elektra, on Wagner, Gluck, Berlioz, and other engagements with the classical past in nineteenth-century music. His most recent books are Victorian Culture and Classical Antiquity: Art, Opera, Fiction and the Proclamation of Modernity (Princeton University Press, 2011), and Sophocles and the Language of Tragedy (OUP, 2012), which has chapters on nineteenth-century philosophical and theatrical understandings of the chorus and musicality. He has lectured all over the world and is a regular in the BBC.
Leanne Langley is a social and cultural historian and Associate Fellow at the Institute of Musical Research, University of London. Her work includes critical studies of the English musical press, histories of the early Royal Academy of Music, Philharmonic Society of London, George Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians and the Queen's Hall Promenade Concerts, and surveys of Berlioz and Schubert reception in nineteenth-century Britain. Formerly a senior editor for the New Grove Dictionary of Opera (Macmillan Press, 1992), she co-edited, with Christina Bashford, Music and British Culture, 1785-1914 (Oxford University Press, 2000). Her research with Simon McVeigh and the late Cyril Ehrlich on London concert life, 1880-1914, has led to new findings on the careers of Henry Wood and Thomas Beecham, and women in British orchestras. She is currently writing a monograph, Unlocking Classical Music: Queen’s Hall and the Rise of Public Orchestral Culture in London, 1880-1930, besides a pair of studies on the musical identity of Regent Street.
Kenneth Hamilton was described after a concerto performance with the St Petersburg State Radio Symphony Orchestra as ‘an outstanding virtuoso – one of the finest players of his generation’ (Kommersant Daily, Moscow), by the New York Times as ‘a performer full of energy and wit’, and by the Singapore Straits Times as ‘a formidable virtuoso’. He has performed worldwide as a recitalist and concerto soloist on both modern and historical instruments, and has published extensively on Romantic music and piano performance. His latest book, After the Golden Age: Romantic Pianism and Modern Performance (Oxford University Press, 2007) became a Classical music bestseller in the US soon after its publication. It was a 2008 Daily Telegraph Book of the Year in the UK, a recipient of an ARSC award in the US, and a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2009.
Hamilton has appeared frequently on radio and television in Britain, the US, Germany, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Korea, Russia, and Turkey – most recently as soloist in a performance of Chopin’s first piano concerto with the Istanbul Chamber Orchestra on Turkish Television – and as pianist and presenter in ‘Mendelssohn in Scotland’, broadcast in Europe and the US by Deutsche Welle Channel. He is a familiar voice on BBC Radio 3, and has numerous festival engagements to his credit, including a memorable recreation of Liszt’s 1847 concerts in Constantinople for the Istanbul International Festival, performances of works by Chopin and Liszt on historical pianos at the Cité de la Musique, Paris, regular recitals at Kings Place Concert Hall, London, appearances at London’s South Bank Centre, the Bard Festivals in the US, and numerous engagements at the Singapore Esplanade. Hamilton has recently taken up a post as Professor of Music at Cardiff University.