Newsletter, 2009

Contents

Message from the President

This is to announce the fourth Newsletter edited by David Mosley for the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA). Now, ten years after the Association’s official Constitutional Meeting, membership holds at 110 scholars from 24 different nations, which again implies a slight increase over the figure given two years ago, when the third Newsletter came out after the Edinburgh WMA Conference.

The main event to report on is the Seventh International Conference on Word and Music Studies, which was held in Vienna from June 10 to 13, 2009. Responses to our Call for Papers were particularly lively for this conference, which may be due to the attractiveness of both the venue, Austria’s history-soaked musical capital, and the main conference topic, performativity, which proved to be a stimulating, wide-ranging subject to concentrate on. The need of parallel sessions in Vienna to accommodate as many papers as deserved to be heard was considered a drawback by many participants, so we will try to find another solution to the problem should it again arise. The conference was competently and energetically organized by Gerold W. Gruber from Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts, who also lured us away to the manifold charms of the Wachau Danube valley (see photos).

At the General Assembly held in Vienna it was decided to have the next WMA Conference early in August 2011 at Santa Fe, when its prestigious Opera Festival will take place. The Association has kindly been invited to Santa Fe by Deborah Weagel, a faithful attendant and speaker at several earlier WMA conferences, and we also expect to benefit from the contacts of Simon Williams, our Santa Barbara Conference Organizer, with the Festival. The Santa Fe Call for Papers is due to be released early in 2010.

A very positive result coming out of the Vienna Conference was an initiative taken by several younger scholars present. Taking their inspiration from the Word and Music Studies Forum, which has been a regular feature of WMA conferences for a number of years now, they developed the idea of having separate conferences held in the years between the biannual WMA Conferences to be organized by scholars who are still in the earlier stages of their careers. The new project, called The Word and Music Association Forum (WMAF), will encourage intensified exchange among scholars ‘in the making’ on their work in progress and on developments in the field in general. The initiative was warmly welcomed by the WMA General Assembly and Executive Board and can count on any support they may wish to get. Anyone interested in joining the activities of the new Forum is encouraged to contact wmaforum@googlemail.com to get on the mailing list. The first WMAF Conference will be held in November 2010 at Dortmund, Germany (link to WMA Forum Call for Papers).

Of other major activities by the Association since the President’s last Newsletter message, proud mention can be made of the publication of two volumes in the Association’s book series, Word and Music Studies (WMS)—volume 9: Essays on Word/Music Adaptation and on Surveying the Field. Proceedings from the Fifth WMA Conference, Santa Barbara, CA, edited by David Urrows (2009), and volume 10: Regula Hohl Trillini. The Gaze of the Listener: English Representations of Domestic Music-Making (2009). Volumes 11 and 12, the Proceedings of the Edinburgh and Vienna WMA Conferences, are both due to come out in 2010.

The President and the entire Executive Board of the Association were unanimously re-elected at the last WMA General Assembly, and we gratefully take it as a sign of the work we have done for the Association. At a time when Intermediality Studies gain a more and more prominent position in the wide spectrum of scholarly activities in the Humanities it seems to become of increased relevance to strengthen the musical aspect of intermedial phenomena in order to balance an observed dominance of visual aspects explored in intermedial discourse.

Walter Bernhart
Graz, 24 October, 2009

Book Series

WMS 12: Proceedings from WMA7 Vienna (anticipated in 2010)

WMS 11: Proceedings from WMA6 Edinburgh (anticipated 2010)

WMS 10: The Gaze of the Listener: English Representations of Domestic Music-Making

by Regula Hohl Trillini

WMS 9: Essays on Word/Music Adaptation and on Surveying the Field

edited by David Francis Urrows

WMS 8: Selected Essays on Opera

by Ulrich Weisstein; edited by Walter Bernhart

WMS 7: Essays on Music and the Spoken Word and on Surveying the Field

edited by Suzanne M. Lodato and David Urrows

WMS 6: Opera and the Novel: The Case of Henry James

by Michael Halliwell; edited by Walter Bernhart

WMS 5: Essays on Literature and Music from 1967-2004

by Steven Paul Scher; edited by Walter Bernhart and Werner Wolf

WMS 4: Essays in Honor of Steven Paul Scher and on Cultural Identity and the Musical Stage

edited by Suzanne M. Lodato, Suzanne Aspden and Walter Bernhart

WMS 3: Essays on the Song Cycle and Defining the Field

edited by Walter Bernhart and Werner Wolf with David L. Mosley

WMS 2: Musico-Poetics in Perspective: Calvin S. Brown in Memoriam

edited by Jean-Louis Cupers and Ulrich Weisstein

WMS 1: Defining the Field

edited by Walter Bernhart, Steven Paul Scher and Werner Wolf

Announcements

The Word and Music Association Forum (WMAF), founded in 2009 under the auspices of the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA), offers younger scholars additional opportunities to present papers—including but not limited to work in progress—and to establish a network of scholars who share an interest in word and music studies. The central event of the Forum will be a biennial conference, held in alternating years with the WMA international conferences.

Word and Music Forum:
First International Conference

November 4-6, 2010
Technische Universität Dortmund

Call for Papers

The first conference of the WMAF will be held at the Technische Universität Dortmund from November 4 to 6, 2010. The conference will consist of two parts: one will explore “Time and Space in Words and Music”, raising questions about the relationship of time and space in intermediality, exploring their role in such phenomena as beginnings and endings, in repetition, in cyclical versus linear time, or in narrativization/musicalization of time and space. The other part will include a number of open colloquia devoted to a discussion of works in progress. We are very pleased that Prof. Peter Rabinowitz of Hamilton College will hold the keynote address at this inaugural conference.

In order to allow adequate time for discussion papers must not exceed 20 minutes. Please submit abstracts of ca. 300 words plus a brief biographical statement (ca. 50 words) to wmaforum@googlemail.com by May 1, 2010. You should also indicate whether your paper is intended for the conference topic or for the open forum of works in progress.

Organizing Committee:

Emily Petermann (Konstanz)
Mario Dunkel (Dortmund)
Beate Schirrmacher (Stockholm)

To be added to the Forum Mailing List and receive updates of interest to the field of Word and Music Studies, please contact us at wmaforum@googlemail.com.

Dr. Siglind Bruhn (former member of the WMA Executive Board) was awarded the honorary degree of Dr. phil. honoris causa by Växjö University on 9 February 2008. Notification of the award was sent by Dr. Boel Lindberg, Professor i musikvetenskap at Växjö University included the following excerpt announcing the award: “Siglind Bruhn has a unique profile in today’s musicological and intermedial research as she is both an artist and an academic. She has, in particular, made internationally relevant contributions to the relation between music and other disciplines.” The complete article may be found at: http://www.vxu.se/presscenter/pressreleaser/2007/allmant/071112_hedersdoktorer/

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