[ANPPOM-Lista] CFP: Experiments in Music Research: Reassessing Pierre Schaeffer’s Contributions to Music and Sound Studies

[Carlos Palombini]

The *Traité des objets musicaux* (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.

A closer reading of the *Traité* 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.
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.

Possible topic areas include, but are not limited to:

   - The *Traité des Objets Musicaux* as a historical document
   - The *Traité*, the GRM, and acousmatic music as cultural institutions
   - Comparative readings of Schaeffer’s theory with that of his
   contemporaries
   - Critical re-readings of the *Traité*’s taxonomies
   - Schaeffer’s work as a media personality, novelist or essayist
   - Schaeffer’s philosophy of science and technology
   - The *Traité* as an analytical or compositional resource for
   non-acousmatic repertoire
   - Schaeffer and the theory of interdisciplinarity
   - Schaeffer’s work from the perspective of music psychology and
   cognitive science
   - Schaeffer’s work from the perspective of ethnomusicology and auditory
   culture studies
   - Applications of Schaeffer’s ideas to the cinema and visual media
   - Language, speech, and semiotics in the *Traité*

*Abstracts of up to 300 words should be sent to patrick.valiquet em ed.ac.uk
<patrick.valiquet em ed.ac.uk> by 30 September 2016. *

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.

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.
Call for Abstracts: Deadline 30 September 2016

http://goo.gl/HHaqvP

-- 
carlos palombini, ph.d. (dunelm)
professor de musicologia ufmg
professor colaborador ppgm-unirio
www.proibidao.org
ufmg.academia.edu/CarlosPalombini <http://goo.gl/KMV98I>
www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos_Palombini2
scholar.google.com.br/citations?user=YLmXN7AAAAAJ
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