The Aesthetics of Absence in Music of the Twenty-First Century
International conference May, 25-26 2023, arranged by the Department of Musicology, Oslo University, in cooperation with the Department of Musicology, Uppsala University.
Scientific committee: Christine Dysers (Uppsala Univ.), Peter Edwards (UiO), Nanette Nielsen (UiO), Erling Guldbrandsen (UiO), Emil Bernhardt (UiO), Halvor Hosar (Uppsala Univ.), Meghan Quinlan (Uppsala Univ.), Jonas Lundblad (Uppsala Univ.)
Programme May, 25
9.15 Coffee & registration
9.45 Welcome (Christine Dysers & Peter Edwards)
Session 1: Absence and the Socio-Political
10.00 ARTURO IRISARRI IZQUIERDO (Hong Kong Baptist University): The Music of Trauma: Tracing the Real in Wang Xilin's Piano Concerto Op. 56
10.30 LUIS VELASCO-PUFLEAU (University of Bern/McGill University): Sounding Out Absent Bodies: Ghost Harmonies, Resonances and Remembering in Marisol Jiménez's XLIII Memoriam Vivere
11.00 MONIKA ŹYŁA (University of Salzburg): The Formulations of Absence in Philip Venable's Answer Machine Tape, 1987 (2022)
11.30 Lunch
Session 2: Absence in Popular Culture
12.30 MATTIA MERLINI (University of Milan): Voidgaze and Phantom Genres: Functions and Dysfunctions of Music Genres on Streaming Platforms
13.00 ALEC WOOD (Yale University): Vaporwave and the Paradox of Intentionality
13.30 LORENZO MONTEFINESE (IULM University, Milan): Presentifying Absence: Memorial Practices in 21st Century Popular Music
14.00 Break
Session 3: The Possibility of Meaning
14.30 MARK BERRY (Royal Holloway, University of London): Absence, Non-Absence, Words, and Music in Kurtág's Fin de partie
15.00 CHRISTINE DYSERS (Uppsala University): The Unspeakable: Music in the Age of Uncertainty
15.30 KRISTINA SOCANSKI CELIK (University of Oslo): Octoechos: Contemporary Music and Spirituality
16.00 PAYAM PILVAR (University of Ottawa): Women Sing Freedom: The Absence of Women's Singing in Post-Revolutionary Iran
16.30 Closing remarks and musical interlude
17.00 Reception and buffet for conference delegates (speakers)
18.00 Talk followed by concert with Ensemble asamisimasa
Programme May, 26
09.15 Coffee
Session 4: In-Between Presence and Absence/Experiencing Absence
09.30 JELENA NOVAK (CESEM, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa): What's Not There? Heiner Goebbel's Aesthetics of Absence and Division Between Visual and Acoustic Stage in Recent Opera and Musical Theatre
10.00 MARTINA BRATIČ (University of Graz): Olga Neuwirth's Coronation Cycle: Into the Void and Beyond
10.30 PETER ADAMS (Cambridge University): Small-Screen Silents: Contemporary Television and the Neo-Silent Aesthetic
11.00 JAKOB MARIA SCHERMANN (University for Music and Performing Arts, Vienna): Transitions into Absence. On the Musical Aesthetics of Disappearance
11.30 Lunch
12.30 Keynote speech: JUDY LOCHHEAD (Stony Brook University): Affective Ephemera: Sounding Absence in the 21st Century
14.00 Break
Session 5: Excess
14.15 DOMINIKA MICAŁ (Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music, Kraków): Two Studies in Losing. Richard Ayres' "No. 51" and "No. 52"
14.45 MARINA SUDO (KU Leuven): Listening within the Absence: Peter Ablinger's Composition and the Musical Potential of Noise
15.15 MARK HUTCHINSON (University of York): The Texture of Memory: Quotation as Absent Presence in Caroline Shaw's Gustave Le Gray
15.45 Break
Session 6: Articulating the Ineffable
16.00 CLARE LESSER (NYU Abu Dhabi): Lacuna and Parergon in Late Vocal Works by Hans Joachim Hespos
16.30 TOBIAS PLEBUCH (Uppsala University): Thinking Absence in George Crumb's Black Angels
17.00 PETER EDWARDS (University of Oslo): Music of the Future and Sense-Making. Performing György Kurtág's Fin de partie
17.30 Closing remarks