Call for Papers
Word and Music Studies: Seventh International Conference (2009)
Location and Dates
The International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA) takes pleasure in announcing its Seventh International Conference to be held at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna from June 10 to 13, 2009. Previous conferences have been held biennially in Graz, Ann Arbor, Sydney, Berlin, Santa Barbara and Edinburgh with conference proceedings published in the association’s book series, Word and Music Studies (WMS). Proceedings from the most recent conference in Edinburgh are due in 2009.
Scholars active in all areas of Word and Music Studies are invited to participate in the Vienna conference, which, like its predecessors, will be devoted to two themes, the second of which, “Surveying the Field”, is a regular feature; the conference will also again include a “Word and Music Studies Forum” section.
Primary theme: “Performativity in Words and Music”
For obvious reasons - in part stemming from tradition and the pragmatics of certain kinds of research - written records are the favourite subjects of academic studies in the field of the humanities. Yet, obviously, human activities - including language and music - cannot be reduced to written media. In fact, what narrative, poetry, drama, the musical theatre and music in general share is an at least historically original performative quality. It is the strongly felt transitoriness of performances which, in the course of cultural history, has brought about the emergence and development of various systems of notation both for language and music. Thus, on the one hand, the recent ‘performative turn’ in parts of the humanities has been a welcome reminder of an essential aspect of cultural activities at large, yet, on the other hand, the emphasis on performativity has also brought about problems and drawbacks (e. g., in the creation of ephemeral works or in disregarding cultural memory and tradition).
The forthcoming WMA conference in Vienna proposes to do justice to this ‘performative turn’ with particular reference to music and literature. Scholars are invited to make contributions to this issue from a plurality of angles, preferably from a media-comparative (‘transmedial’) point of view, having both literature and music in mind. Possible subjects, which may be treated with a theoretical perspective and/or with an eye to specific case studies, include the following:
- The relationship between written record and performance in literature and music (poiesis / praxis, composition / performance, text / event, meaning / experience, product / process, complexity / simplicity, spatial extension / temporal immediacy, etc.)
- The theoretical gains and losses of a performative approach in the study of music and literature, or: performativity and cultural memory
- Is performance an inevitable (re-)interpretation in literature and music? or: the value of ‘historically informed performance practice’ (Harnoncourt, Shakespeare’s Globe, etc.)
- Is Roman Ingarden’s ‘concretization’ a form of mental performance? or: is not all reception a form of cognitive performance?
- Asymmetries in the performativity of music and literature, or: is literature less performative than music?
- The role of the body and the human voice in the performance of literature and music
- Institutional prerequisites, audience expectations, and local/spatial settings as ‘framings’ influencing the performance of literature and music
- Poetry readings as ‘musicalizations’ of texts (verse delivery: realistic ‘Actors’ vs. oratorical ‘Minstrels’ - C. S. Lewis)
- Historical styles of text delivery (rhetorical traditions of ‘pronuntiatio’, Victorian prose readings, etc.)
- Playfulness/improvisation as performative qualities in literature and music
- ‘Secondary orality’ in modern times (happenings, ‘performance art’, ‘new oral poetry’, experimental, intermedial forms of performance, etc.)
- Performances mises en abyme in literature and musical theatre
Second theme: “Surveying the Field”
The second theme, “Surveying the Field”, involves papers airing general theoretical and methodological questions intrinsic to the scholarly field of Word and Music Studies. Overviews of recent developments and new directions are welcome; however, papers in this area should not address specialized topics.
Word and Music Studies Forum
The third feature of the conference, the “Word and Music Studies Forum” section, will consist of shorter papers on any subject in the field of Word and Music Studies. Younger scholars are especially encouraged to present their work in the Forum to an expert audience.
Paper length and abstracts
Papers accepted for the “Performativity in Words and Music” and “Surveying the Field” sections should be 30 minutes in length. Papers for the “Forum” section should be 15 minutes in length. Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words, and attach your current location and academic affiliation, via email to Walter Bernhart, walter.bernhart@uni-graz.at, by 15 September 2008.
Additional Information
Members of the Programme Committee are Walter Bernhart (University of Graz, Austria), Michael Halliwell (University of Sydney, AUS), David L. Mosley (University of Louisville, KY) and Werner Wolf (University of Graz, Austria).
The local organizer in Vienna is Gerold W. Gruber (gruber-g@mdw.ac.at, gerold.gruber@exilarte.at), joined by his assistant, Anna Strutz (strutz@mdw.ac.at, anna.strutz@exilarte.at), both members of the Institute for Music Analysis, Music Theory and History of Music at the University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna. The conference venue will be at the university site, which is situated in the vicinity of the Konzerthaus, the Musikverein and the Vienna State Opera. The conference will be held during the time of the International Festival, “Wiener Festwochen”, for which booking information will be provided in the conference’s First Circular, and the State Opera will also still be in season.
Information on accommodation in Vienna will also be given in the First Circular. It will range from low-priced rooms (a little way out but easily reached by tram or subway) through a variety of hotels around the university (at about 100 Euro per person) to top places such as the Intercontinental, the Marriot or even the famous “Sacher” (at the higher range of prices).
An excursion is planned to take conference participants to the lovely Wachau valley, the wine-growing region along the Danube, possibly including visits to the magnificent baroque abbey of Melk and the charming riverside village of Dürnstein.