Concepts of Improvisation Between the Two World
Wars
30. September - 1. Oktober 2016
While research on means of composition and musical performance that rely on improvisation, chance, or nature has attracted a certain amount of scholarly attention since the end of the twentieth century, their impact on the art music community of the first decades of the twentieth century has generally been neglected in historical musicology. The conference, which is held as part of the SNSF-funded research project “Concepts of improvisation and their impact on early twentieth century art music”, is organized by the Musicology Department of the University of Basel in partnership with the Hochschule für Musik Basel. It aims to advance current musicological research on the interplay between Western art music of the first half of the twentieth century and notions of improvisation, randomness, participatory music, and open form. It will also investigate some of the period’s improvisatory approach to classical performance and the use of extempore techniques in popular and functional music. Moreover, it seeks to integrate in its deliberations current theories of ‘staged improvisation’ and ‘performativity’. Echoing the internationalism of the conference’s thematic fields as well as that of its delegates, the chosen languages of the conference are English and German.
Webseite Tagung:
http://mws.unibas.ch/forschung
Keynote speakers:
- Prof. Dr. Sabine Feisst (Arizona State University)
- Prof. Dr. Michael Fjeldsøe (University of Copenhagen)