<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><p>The
<i>Traité des objets musicaux</i> (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.</p>
<p>A closer reading of the <i>Traité</i> 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.<br>
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.</p>
<p>Possible topic areas include, but are not limited to:</p>
<ul><li>The <i>Traité des Objets Musicaux</i> as a historical document</li><li>The <i>Traité</i>, the GRM, and acousmatic music as cultural institutions</li><li>Comparative readings of Schaeffer’s theory with that of his contemporaries</li><li>Critical re-readings of the <i>Traité</i>’s taxonomies</li><li>Schaeffer’s work as a media personality, novelist or essayist</li><li>Schaeffer’s philosophy of science and technology</li><li>The <i>Traité</i> as an analytical or compositional resource for non-acousmatic repertoire</li><li>Schaeffer and the theory of interdisciplinarity</li><li>Schaeffer’s work from the perspective of music psychology and cognitive science</li><li>Schaeffer’s work from the perspective of ethnomusicology and auditory culture studies</li><li>Applications of Schaeffer’s ideas to the cinema and visual media</li><li>Language, speech, and semiotics in the <i>Traité</i></li></ul>
<p><strong>Abstracts of up to 300 words should be sent to <a href="mailto:patrick.valiquet@ed.ac.uk">patrick.valiquet@ed.ac.uk</a> by 30 September 2016. </strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Experiments in Music Research is organised by Patrick Valiquet and
presented in collaboration with Scott Wilson, director of Birmingham
Electroacoustic Sound Theatre, University of Birmingham, and with the
support of the Institute of Musical Research, Royal Holloway, University
of London.</p>
<div class="">
Call for Abstracts: Deadline 30 September 2016<br><br><a href="http://goo.gl/HHaqvP">http://goo.gl/HHaqvP</a><br>
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</div><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div>carlos palombini, ph.d. (dunelm)<br>professor de musicologia ufmg<br>professor colaborador ppgm-unirio<br><a href="http://www.proibidao.org" target="_blank">www.proibidao.org</a><br><a href="http://goo.gl/KMV98I" target="_blank">ufmg.academia.edu/CarlosPalombini</a><br></div><div><a href="http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Palombini2" target="_blank">www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Palombini2</a><br><a href="http://scholar.google.com.br/citations?user=YLmXN7AAAAAJ" target="_blank">scholar.google.com.br/citations?user=YLmXN7AAAAAJ</a><br></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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