Editor's Note

This issue of Notes contains a call for nominations for the 2004 MSA Victorian Chapter Committee, listings of Australian events coming up in 2003 and 2004, reports on conferences, and recent publications by chapter members. There is also a call for papers for the 2003 Chapter Conference to be held on 14 and 15 November. The committee would like to encourage all Victorian members, not just student members, to consider giving a paper, especially since the joint annual conference of the MSA and the NZMS will be taking place in Wellington two weeks later, thus giving members participating in the latter conference a chance to run through their presentations in a more informal setting.

The night of trial presentations that took place on Wednesday 18 June was very successful. As part of this year’s events the Committee is also organising a seminar/lecture to be given by Professor Larry Sitsky in the week commencing 8 September. Further details will be sent out to members very soon.

DIMITRA STAMOGIANNOU

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MSA Victorian Chapter Committee for 2003

President: Joel Crotty, joel.crotty@arts.monash.edu.au

Secretary: Ian Burk, i.burk@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au

Treasurer: Peter Campbell, p.campbell@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au

Conference Convenor: Patricia Shaw, p.shaw@patrick.acu.edu.au

Notes Editor: Dimitra Stamogiannou, dgstam@unimelb.edu.au

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Notice is hereby given that the Annual General Meeting of the MSA Vic. Chapter will be held on Saturday 15 November.  At the meeting, business will include reports from the President, Treasurer and Secretary, and voting for positions on the Chapter Committee for 2004.

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Victorian Chapter Conference 2003

Friday-Saturday 14-15 November 2003
9.30 am–5 pm

Early Music Studio, University of Melbourne
27 Royal Pde, Parkville

Programme to be announced in early November.

Call for Papers
Abstracts of 150 words for 20-minute papers should be submitted by 17 October to the Conference Convenor, Patricia Shaw. The enclosed form maybe sent by e- or snail-mail, although submission by electronic means is preferred.  All MSA Victorian members are warmly encouraged to offer papers.

Registration
The registration fee for the whole conference is $5.00, payable at the door, and includes afternoon tea.  Please register by 7 November, using the form in this issue of Notes or by contacting the Conference Convenor, as numbers are needed for catering.

2003 Musicology Prize
All papers presented at the Chapter Conference by honours and postgraduate students are eligible for the Chapter Musicology Prize, valued at $250, conditional on the paper’s being submitted for consideration for publication in Musicology Australia.

Chapter Dinner
The conference is planned to finish at approximately 6.30 pm, to be followed by dinner. A venue will be decided on the day according to numbers and preferences of those who wish to attend. Those who are attending the dinner only should come to the conference venue at around 6.30.

Annual General Meeting
Notice is hereby given that the Annual General Meeting of the MSA Vic. Chapter will be held on Saturday 15 November. At the meeting, business will include reports from the President, Treasurer and Secretary, and voting for positions on the Chapter Committee for 2004.

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Nominations are invited for the election of the 2004 Victorian Chapter Committee. Nominations can be made from any financial member of the MSA resident in Victoria, and must be seconded by another financial member of the MSA. A nomination form is included at the end of this issue of Notes and must be received by the Chapter Secretary no later than 7 November. Please note that the original form with signatures is required; faxes, e-mails or e-mail attachments are not acceptable. The completed forms should be sent to the Chapter Secretary, Ian Burk:

    Ian Burk
    Centre for Studies in Australian Music
    Faculty of Music
    The University of Melbourne
    VIC  3010

The following positions are available:

President, Secretary, Treasurer, Conference Convenor, Newsletter Editor

If there is more than one nomination for any of the positions, elections will be held at the Annual General Meeting on Saturday 15 November.

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2004 MSA Victorian Chapter Nomination Form

Positions available: President, Secretary, Treasurer, Conference Convenor, Newsletter Editor

Name                                                                    Position

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The completed form should be sent no later than 7 November to the Chapter Secretary, Ian Burk:

Ian Burk
Centre for Studies in Australian Music
Faculty of Music
The University of Melbourne
VIC    3010

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2004 MSA Victorian Chapter Offer of Paper and Registration Form

Please send by      17 October for Offer of Paper & Registration

                            7 November for Registration only

To:
Trish Shaw at p.shaw@patrick.acu.edu.au
                           or
School of Arts & Sciences, ACU National, Locked Bag 4115, Fitzroy VIC 3065
Phone: 9953 3211
Fax: 9495 6188 (marked “Attn: Trish Shaw”)

Place a cross in the boxes beside all that apply:

Title:

Abstract:

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Elizabeth I Conference, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, 21-22 March 2003

Having tried out my thoughts about Benjamin Britten’s opera Gloriana on the MSA (VIC)’s Chapter Conference at the end of last year, I bravely headed to Southern Illinois, USA, to give a revised version of the paper at a conference about Queen Elizabeth I of England.

This year is the four hundredth anniversary of Queen Elizabeth I’s death in 1603, as well as the fiftieth anniversary of Gloriana’s première during the coronation festivities for Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Despite the outbreak of the war in Iraq, not to mention SARS, people travelled from various places in the USA and Canada to attend the two-day interdisciplinary conference. The main stimulus of the conference seemed to be Elizabeth I’s status as an icon of Shakespearean and women’s studies. The conference was organized by SIUE’s English Department, and the keynote speaker was an American scholar and author of books about Elizabeth I, Carole Levin.

Most of the papers centred on literary and painted portraits of Elizabeth I. I was surprised that mine was the only paper about music; however, the audience was very receptive to the topic. Technological hitches (the CD player not arriving on time) led me to sing my musical illustrations. The portrayal of Elizabeth I as an aging, lonely woman and monarch in Gloriana, and the poor reception that Britten and his opera received at the time of Gloriana’s première, became the subject of lively discussion.

ROSEMARY RICHARDS

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“Choral Music in Melbourne: A Symposium”, Faculty of Music, University of Melbourne, 21 June 2003

On Saturday 21 June the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Studies in Australian Music and the Melbourne Philharmonic Society sponsored a day’s worth of papers on the history of choral music in Melbourne.  Focusing mainly on the Philharmonic, the papers were, in order of appearance and chronology: Thérèse Radic on ‘Piety, Pleasure and the Philharmonic: Choral Music in Melbourne from Settlement to Federation’; Jan Stockigt on ‘Echoes of “Home”: Late Nineteenth-Century Choral Repertoire’; John Rickard on ‘Messiahs, Elijahs and All That Jazz: Melbourne Musical Taste Between the Wars’; Kathleen Nelson on ‘Preservation by Association: The Melbourne Philharmonic Society under Contract to the Australian Broadcasting Commission’; and Peter Campbell discussing ‘“And There Came All Manner of Choirs”: Melbourne’s Burgeoning Choral Scene in the Last Fifty Years’.

Although this history was selective enough to comprise only an overview there were a number of treats: gems from Terry Radic’s photo collection, her stories of matchmaking and business hatching at choral meets; the fascinating coincidences uncovered by Jan Stockigt when she compared dates of reports of works in the Musical Times and their subsequent performances in Melbourne; John Rickard’s memories of his father, an organist, and his mother, a mezzo, and their membership of the Philharmonic. From the choir’s heyday in the late nineteenth century, when it was supported by the wealthy elite and hundreds participated in its performances, these papers charted a steady decline. By 1936 its repertoire was stagnant, audiences were declining, the financial position was desperate, no orchestra could be found which could play in tune and Bernard Heinze was obliged to apologise for the quality of the singing. The choir survived, for a time, thanks to a contract with the ABC, but no one seeing Peter Campbell’s endless lists of contemporary choirs could pretend that the Philharmonic has maintained the status it once had. On the other hand, Peter was at pains to point out that choral music-making in Melbourne continues to thrive in special interest groups, and thus if you are a gay, Kurdish university student interested in singing Renaissance music, there are choirs aplenty to join.

SUE ROBINSON, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

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Third Biennial International Conference on Twentieth-Century Music, University of Nottingham, U.K., 26-29 June 2003

The Third Biennial International Conference on Twentieth-Century Music was hosted by the University of Nottingham. One of the most impressive features of the conference was the diverse range of subjects covered. Each day would begin with the difficult task of choosing from a varied array of parallel sessions that included: ‘Discourses on Pop and Dance Music’, ‘Pitch Organization’, ‘Post-war Radical Aesthetics’, ‘Music and the BBC, 1967-2000’, ‘Song and Subject in German Music’, ‘Contemporary Performance Practice’, and ‘Music and Twentieth-Century Islam’. Though I cannot do justice here to the quality and diversity of the papers presented, I will use this space to mention the few that were most memorable for me.

Yayoi Uno Everett’s (Emory University) theoretical account (informed by Mikhail Bakhtin, Esti Sheinberg, and Linda Hutcheon) of parody in twentieth-century music provided a compelling framework for her study of quotation and allusion in Andriessen’s Anachronie in ‘Modelling and Parody in the Music of Louis Andriessen’. In the same session, Nicholas Routley and Rowena Braddock (University of Sydney) also focused on aspects of Andriessen’s multi-layered discourse in ‘Productive Disjunction: Reading the Blanks in Writing to Vermeer’. The paper explored disjunction in this rarely performed opera (a collaboration between Andriessen and Peter Greenaway) as a productive, positive, and even unifying feature. There was a warm reception, in the ensuing discussion, for Routley’s remark that (please note that I aim here to capture the intent, if not the eloquence, of Routley’s words): despite the long-term assimilation into literary scholarship of the Barthesian notion of ‘The Death of the Author’, Musicology has yet to fully accept that ‘the mourning period’ is well and truly over.  Fortunately, Andriessen, who was present at the session, did not appear to take offence. On the contrary, in his candid and relaxed keynote address, he made no claim to hermeneutic authorial authority, but enthusiastically promoted the idea of his music as (and I quote) ‘polyinterpretable’.

Finally, I would like to mention the paper that I enjoyed the most for its clear and convincing presentation and application of often complex theories: Michael Klein’s (Temple University, Philadelphia) ‘Lutoslawski’s Symphony No. 4 and the Narrative Logic of Suffering’, traced a musical narrative of emotional states in Lutoslawski’s Fourth Symphony. Through his semiotic approach, Klein was also able to reveal an intriguing dramatic model, with the same narrative path of suffering, apotheosis, and reversal, in Chopin’s Fourth Ballade.

I could not close this (rather limited) report on the conference without commenting on its setting in the beautiful campus of the University of Nottingham. The music department and performing arts precinct are bountifully provided for with their wonderful, modern theatres and lakeside location. Equally impressive was Robert Adlington’s (apparently effortless) impeccable administration of the event.

ANNE MARSHAM, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

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“Sonic Synergies, Creative Cultures”, 10^th National Conference of IASPM Australia-New Zealand, University of South Australia, 17-20 July 2003

In mid-July this year, delegates from all around Australia and from other parts of the globe travelled to Adelaide for the Sonic Synergies: Creative Cultures conference. Planned as a cross-disciplinary conference, Sonic Synergies was a joint venture between the University of South Australia, the Hawke Institute, and the Australia-New Zealand branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM), and also incorporated the annual conference for local IASPM members. Around one hundred papers were scheduled, many of them music-related, and conference participants were treated to no less than seven keynote speakers. Keynote speakers included Richard Nunns, who introduced and played a large variety of Maori traditional instruments while telling us some of their stories, sounds and uses in Maori tradition; Tommy Defrantz spoke about the ways in which hip hop music elicits particular kinds of corporeal responses; and Sharon Longridge told us about the national media-based arts festival, noise, which is a platform for young artists (from writers, to musicians, to painters and beyond) to show their creativity to a broad audience by engaging with new technologies. Along with the keynote speakers, the organising committee worked hard to secure the involvement of six international speakers by way of video link-up, which enabled us to hear about topics as diverse as the idea of a ‘virtual subculture’ as enacted on the internet, reggae sound system sessions in Jamaica and the history of the piano in popular culture. Plenary sessions focussing on hip hop, a new international project called ‘Playing for Life’, and music and cultural policy in Australia were also a highlight.

General stream papers covered a similarly wide range of topics, from theories of aural repetition to doof communities, digital copyright to church music, extreme metal to girl power, Japanese popular music on television to Michael Jackson’s gutteral grunts. The conference was a potent reminder that the study of popular music in Australasia is not only healthy, but is producing important and dynamic work. It is interesting to note that the conference contained a particular emphasis on hip hop music and cultural practice, with a number of sessions and papers addressing issues related to this area, suggesting that the study of hip hop is a particularly vibrant area of research at present. Moreover, the conference also showed that there is a distinct commitment by many scholars to engage with new technologies and their impact on popular music production, practice, policy and theory.

Further information about the conference can be found on the conference’s website: http://www.com.unisa.edu.au/sonic/. If you would like to know more about becoming a member of IASPM Australia-New Zealand, an inter-disciplinary community of popular music scholars, please see our website, http://www.emediate.com.au/iaspm/, or contact a member of the executive for more information:

Shane Homan (chair) shane.homan@newcastle.edu.au
Alison Huber (treasurer) a.huber@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au
Sarah Baker (secretary) thorbak@hotmail.com

ALISON HUBER, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

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‘Cendrinnon, Cinderella and Spectacle: Insights into Sor’s Most Successful Work’ by Michael Christoforidis and Elizabeth Kertesz, in Estudios Sobre Fernando Sor / Sor Studies, ed. Luis Gásser (Madrid: ICCMU, 2003).

‘Musical Lines From a Programmatic Maze: An Interpretation of Maia Ciobanu’s Ostinato II’ by Joel Crotty, MikroPolyphonie (May 2003), http://farben.latrobe.edu.au/mikropol/volume8.

‘The Meteoric Rise of Controversial New Indonesian Artist Inul Daratista’ by Craig De Wilde, Music Business Journal, vol. 3, www.musicjournal.org.

‘Debates and Impressions of Change and Continuity in Indonesia’s Musical Arts Since the Fall of Suharto, 1998-2002’ by Margaret Kartomi, Wacana Seni, vol. 1 (2002), pp. 109-150.

‘Meaning, Style and Change in Gamelan and Wayang Kulit Banjar Since their Transplantation from Hindu-Buddhist Java to South Kalimantan’ by Margaret Kartomi, World of Music, vol. 44, no. 3 (2002), pp. 17-55.

‘Continuity and Change in the Music-Culture of the Baghdadi-Jews Throughout two Diasporas in the Colonial and Post-Colonial Periods—An Introduction’ by Margaret Kartomi, Australian Journal of Jewish Studies, vol. 16 (2002), pp. 90-110.

‘Taking Her Breath Away: A Study of Two Popsongs’ by Linda Kouvaras, in Loose Canons: Proceedings from the National Festival of Women’s Music, Canberra, 2001, ed. Linda Kouvaras, Graham Hair and Ruth Lee Martin (Sydney: Australian Music Centre, 2003).

‘When the String Snaps: Two Domestic Prison Scenarios’ by Linda Kouvaras, in the Conference Proceedings from the XXV National Conference of the Musicological Society of Australia, 2002 (London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2003).

‘Fasch Visits Dresden: c.1726-1728’ by Janice Stockigt, in Das Wirken des Anhalt-Zerbster Hofkapellmeisters Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688-1758) für auswärtige Hofkapellen, ed. Konstanze Musketa.  Proceedings of the Biennial Conference of the Internationale Fasch---Gesellschaft e.V (Dessau: Anhalt-Edition Dessau, 2001), pp. 29-56.

‘Hochwürden Baron F. A. G. Ouseley besucht Sachsen’ by Janice Stockigt and Ian Burk (SLUB-Kurier: Aus der Arbeit der Sächsischen Landesbibliothek-Staats und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, 16 Jahrgang 2002, Heft 4).

‘Catalogo (Thematico) [sic] della Musica di Chiesa (catholica [sic] in Dresda) composta Da diversi Autori - secondo l’Alfabetto 1765’ by Janice Stockigt (Conference on Early Music Context and Ideas, Krakow, September 2003), published online.

Review article by Janice Stockigt: Johann Friedrich Fasch, Großbesetzte Konzerte, ed. Manfred Fechner for Denkmäler Mitteldeutscher Barockmusik, Serie II, Band 4 (Leipzig: Hofmeister, 2000).  Reviewed for Musicology Australia, vol. 25 (2002)

Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia Ed. John Whiteoak and Aline Scott-Maxwell (Sydney: Currency House, 2003).

‘Two Frontiers: Early Cowboy Music in Australia’ by John Whiteoak, in Outback and Urban: Australian Country Music, ed. Philip Hayward (Gympie: Australian Institute of Country Music Press, 2003).

‘Unorthodox Ad Libbers’ by John Whiteoak, Sounds Australian (special Australia Ad Lib issue, ed. Jon Rose, 2002), pp. 30-31.

‘The Birth and Death of an Early Australian Popular Music Industry: Dance Orchestra Music’ by John Whiteoak, in Musical In-between-ness: Proceedings of the 8^th Australia-New Zealand ISAPM Conference, ed. Denis Crowdy, Shane Homan, Tony Mitchell (Sydney: University of Technology, 2002).

Forthcoming

‘From Berlin to Bondi: The Flight of the Weintraub Syncopators’ by Kay Dreyfus, Margaret Kartomi and John Whiteoak, Heat, vol. 6 (January 2004).

Review article by Linda Kouvaras: Music, Sensation, and Sensuality, ed. Linda Phyllis Austern (Routledge, 2002).  Reviewed for Notes: The Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association (December 2003)

‘“Pity the Town Without a Band”: Brass Banding in Australian Rural Society Before World War Two’ by John Whiteoak, Rural Society, vol. 11 (November 2003).

‘How Abe Walters Became Don Carlos: Australian Constructions of Latin American Music and Dance Before Latin American Migration’ by John Whiteoak, Perfect Beat: The Journal of Research into Contemporary Music and Popular Culture, vol. 6 (December 2003).

‘Swing ‘Em to the Fiddle with a Hi Diddle: Square Dancing and Square Dance Music in Australia’ by John Whiteoak, in Outback and Urban: Australian Country Music, vol. 2, ed. Philip Hayward (Gympie: Australian Institute of Country Music Press, 2004).

Australasian Music Research vol. 7. Ed. Deborah Crisp.  Articles by Linda Barwick, Aaron Corn with Neparrnga Gumbula, Kay Dreyfus, Michelle Duffy, Jillian Graham, Bronia Kornhauser, Liz Reed, Fiona Richards, Robin Ryan, Aline Scott-Maxwell, and Adrian Thomas.

Will be available from the Centre for Studies in Australian Music, Faculty of Music, University of Melbourne, VIC 3010; ph: (03) 8344 4607, fax: (03) 9349 4473; e-mail ozcentre@music.unimelb.edu.au or visit http://www.music.unimelb.edu.au/about/CSAM/CSAM.html.

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For international conferences see the Royal Holloway listings: www.sun.rhbnc.ac.uk/Music/Conferences/index.html

2003
 

27-30 Sept.	“Artistic Practice as Research”, XXVth Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Music Education, Griffith University, Brisbane. Contact: Kay Hartwig, c/o VTAE Mt Gravatt Campus, Griffith University, Nathan Q 4111. Email: K.Hartwig@griffith.edu.au, tel.: (07) 3875 5733, fax: (07) 3875 6868
3-5 Oct.	“Performance, Aesthetics and Experience”, MSA National Workshop, School of Music, University of Queensland. Contact: Dr Sam Owens, School of Music, University of Queensland, Brisbane Q 4072, s.owens@mailbox.uq.edu.au
14-15 Nov.	MSA Victorian Chapter Conference
27–30 Nov.	Joint annual conference of the MSA and the NZMS, School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington, NZ. Contact: Allan Thomas, allan.thomas@vuw.ac.nz

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2004
 

12–17 July	Symposium of the International Musicological Society, Monash University, Melbourne. Contact: Margaret Kartomi, School of Music, Monash University, Clayton 3800, SIMS2004@arts.monash.edu.au or see SIMS website http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/music/sims2004
17-19 July	Symposium on Music in France: 1830-1940, University of Melbourne. Contact: Kerry Murphy, Faculty of Music, University of Melbourne, VIC 3010, kerryrm@unimelb.edu.au, fax (03) 8344 5346
18-20 July	Australian Music and its International Connections, National Library of Australia, Canberra
20-21 Nov	MSA Study Weekend, Elder School of Music, University of Adelaide.  Themes will include music criticism in the public arena and intersections between musicology and criticism. Contact: Graham Strahle, (08) 8267 5573 or 0407 319 545

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