6-10 March 2023

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Ariane Jeßulat, Universität der Künste Berlin

Ariane Jeßulat will join us in March 2023 for four days in Amsterdam, Netherlands (6-7 March) and Leuven, Belgium (9-10 March). Below you can find the abstracts and program: 

Schema Theory and Topic Theory – A Critical Evaluation
Since the later 1960s (Elmar Seidel, Heinrich Poos, Carl Dahlhaus), it has been impossible to imagine musical analysis without working with "Satzmodelle". Originally used as a corrective to the one-sided harmony theory, the interest in contrapuntal models came into play specifically when certain phenomena could not be explained with the usual methods of harmony theory coined by Rameau. Today, the field of research is far more diverse and, it seems, scattered in schools: topos research of the German or North American school, Robert O. Gjerdingen's schema theory, as well as the theory of Satzmodelle from Berlin, Hamburg and Freiburg schools have much in common, but seem to increasingly blur their historical origins, which do not date back to Carl Dahlhaus' "Untersuchungen", but - like Asaf'ev's intonation theory at the beginning of the 20th century. The class attempts to discern the origins of topoi and models in music theory of the first half of the 20th century, influenced by early phenomenology.
 
Counterpoint and Sociality
Mnemonic slogans assigning specific behavioural patterns to the individual voices of the four-part movement - e.g. the tenor as the leader, the bass as nurturing foundation and the alto as a maid - are well known. These roles did not first emerge in the four-part setting but go back mainly to rules of polyphonic improvisation in the 15th and 16th centuries, as practised at least in counterpoint training.
The musical roles created in this way and their socialities are also preserved in notated music - even when rules of tonality are no longer authoritative.
The lessons, whose contents arise from the DFG Collaborative Research Centre 1512 "Intervening Arts", trace traces of this sociality into contemporary music.
 
Intertextuality as a Method in Music Theory
Since Kevin Corsyn's 1995 study on intertextuality as a method of music-theoretical analysis, the influence of older music on younger music (and vice versa in the sense of Hans Georg Gadamer's "Wirkungsgeschichte") has been an important starting point for analytical questioning. Using examples from Schubert, Schumann, Hensel, Mendelssohn, Wagner and Dieter Schnebel, the lecture demonstrates how intertextuality is a trace of remembered music via older models. This lecture goes back to my habilitation thesis, "Remembered Music - The Ring of the Nibelung as Musical Memory Theatre", but uses a different repertoire.
 
Magic Names - On the Normativity of Music-Theoretical Terminology
Fred Everett Maus has repeatedly researched the power-specific gestures of music-theoretical terminology: the traditional concepts of music-theoretical objectivation not only name musical phenomena, but also produce them through the act of naming. In current music research, this form of music-theoretical framing by terminology is the focus of postcolonial and postfeminist critique.
Transformation through naming is already a central theme in the early 20th century, with Ernst Cassirer, in myth research or in early music phenomenology. Early approaches to a musical hermeneutics are characterised by this transformative potential of conceptual capture. The lecture examines the emergence of modern paradigms of musical analysis and their conceptualisation against the background of a critical consideration of normativity.

PROGRAM
Monday 6 March (Amsterdam):
10:30-12:30 - Schema Theory and Topic Theory - A Critical Evaluation (CvA, room 803)
14:30-16:30 - Counterpoint and Sociality (CvA, room 445)
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Tuesday 7 March (Amsterdam):
10:00-12:00 - Magic Names - On the Normativity of Music-Theoretical Terminology (CvA, room 803)
14:00-16:00 - Intertextuality as a Method in Music Theory (Universiteit van Amsterdam, Humanities Lab, room BH-F0.01)

Thursday 9 March (Leuven):
10:00-12:00 - Schema Theory and Topic Theory - A Critical Evaluation (KU Leuven - LETT 08.16)
14:00-16:00 - Counterpoint and Sociality (MATRIX Centrum voor nieuwe muziek)

Friday 10 March (Leuven):
9:00 - 11:00 - Magic Names - On the Normativity of Music-Theoretical Terminology (MATRIX Centrum voor nieuwe muziek)
11:30-13:30 - Intertextuality as a Method in Music Theory (MATRIX Centrum voor nieuwe muziek)