Gustav Mahler Centenary Conference
- When?
- Thursday 7 July 2011 to Saturday 9 July 2011
- Where?
- University of Surrey Lecture Theatre M, PATS Studio 1, and Hatchlands, Clandon
- Open to:
- Public, Staff, Students
- Speaker:
- Professor Julian Johnson (Royal Holloway, London)
- Admission information:
- Registration details at: http://www.ias.surrey.ac.uk/events.php#Mahler
Mahler: Contemporary of the Past?
This conference takes the opportunity in Mahler’s centenary year to advance scholarly understanding through fresh investigation and re-investigation of cultural, historical, analytical and performance issues relating to his work.
Particular emphasis is placed on ideas of nostalgia and historicism in Mahler’s output, and alongside these are themed sessions that address countervailing notions of modernity, as well as structural processes, aesthetic theory, the intermedial, and Mahler’s performance and compositional legacy.
Accompanying the conference are five concerts, an art exhibition, a sound installation, and video material relating to Mahler’s composing locations and a recent film by Beate Thalberg (ORF, Vienna).
Thursday 7 July
(All presentations take place in Lecture Theatre M)
0830-0900 Registration (Lecture Theatre M foyer)
0900-0915 Welcome: Professor Phil Powrie, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities; Jeremy Barham, conference convenor
Paper session 1. Culture and Interpretation (i): Nostalgia, Myth and the Fourth Symphony
0915 Suzie Wilkins, ‘Megalomania, Marginalisation and Martyrdom: The Mahler Myth and its Consequences for his Fourth Symphony’
0945 Benjamin K. Davies, ‘Nostalgia, Denial and Virtual Reality in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, First Movement’
1015 Caroline Kita, ‘Mahler’s “Heavenly Life”: Nostalgia or Critical Commentary?’
1045-1100 Coffee (Lecture Theatre M foyer)
Paper session 2. Analytical Approaches
1100 Seth Monahan, ‘Grappling with Sonata Form in “Part One” of Mahler’s Third Symphony’
1130 Anna Stoll-Knecht, ‘Mahler’s Seventh Symphony and Die Meistersinger’
1200 Mathieu Schneider, ‘“Pedester ist der Musikstoff, sublim der Vortrag” – Mahler’s Scherzos as Impulses for the Evolution of Musical Language’
1230-1345 Lunch and visit to art exhibition 'A Celebration of Mahler' (Caroline Tate), and sound installation ‘spirit redux’(Matthew Sansom), Lewis Elton Gallery
1400 Keynote address: Julian Johnson
1500-1515 Afternoon tea/coffee
Paper session 3. Performance (i)
1515 Matthew Mugmon, ‘Advising Koussevitzky: Copland, Mahler, and the BSO Canon’
1545 Eric Shanes, ‘Doing Exactly What it Says on the Tin: Sound and Meaning in the Eighth Symphony’
1630 Depart for Hatchlands
1700-1900 Early evening meal at Queen’s Head pub, Clandon
1930 Tour of Hatchlands collection of historic keyboard instruments
2030 Evening concert: Maureen Galea and Michelle Castelletti (Mahler songs and 19th-century Bohemian piano music)
Friday 8 July
Paper session 4. Histories (i): Musical Invocations
0900 Molly Breckling, ‘Mining the Past for New Expressions: Song Form as Narrative Device In Mahler’s Ballads from Des Knaben Wunderhorn’
0930 Lóránt Péteri, ‘Idyllic Masks of Death: References to Orphée aux Enfers in “Das himmlische Leben”’
1000 Alessandro Cecchi, ‘Mahler, Contemporary of Bruckner: Bruckner’s Ninth and Mahler’s First Symphony’
1030-1045 Coffee
Paper session 5. Culture and Interpretation (ii): Aesthetic Theory
1045 Stephen Downes, ‘Allegory and Symbol in the Music of Mahler’
1115 Mark Nixon, ‘Deceptive Perfect Cadences: The V-VI-I Cadential Progression and the Earliness of Mahler’s Late Romanticism’
1145 Federico Celestini, ‘Gustav Mahler and the Aesthetics of De-Identification’
1215-1315 Lunch and visit to exhibition and sound installation
1315-1400 Lunchtime concert: Tetra Guitar Quartet, music by Gustav Mahler, Stephen Goss and Kurt Weill (Studio 1, PATS)
Paper session 6. Performance (ii): Re-creation and Reception
1415 Roberto Scoccimarro, ‘The Reconstruction of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony: Yoel Gamzou’s Performance Edition’
1445 Daniil Petrov, ‘Pique Dame by Peter Tchaikovsky at the Vienna Court Opera. On the History of the Production Under the Direction of Gustav Mahler’
1515 Inna Barsova, ‘From the Elites to the Masses: the Fate of the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony’
1545-1600 Afternoon tea/coffee
1600-1730 Composer discussion forum: Stephen Goss, Edward Gregson, Emily Howard, David Matthews, and Anthony Payne
1745-1945 Barbecue by the lake (dinner in Oak Suite if weather is bad)
2000 Evening concert: Uri Caine (Studio 1, PATS)
Saturday 9 July
Paper session 7. The Eighth Symphony
0900 Stephen E. Hefling, ‘Justine Mahler’s Faust Notebook’
0930 Peter Revers, ‘Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony and Max Reinhardt’s Concept of
“Massenregie”’
1000 Vera Micznik, ‘Mahler’s Eighth and Das Lied: an Exploration of their Discursive Similarities’
1030-1045 Coffee
Paper session 8. Culture and Interpretation (iii): Love, Death and Modernity
1045 Morten Solvik, ‘“What Love Tells Me.” Art and Eros in Mahler’s World’
1115 Maria Christofi, ‘Thanatos in Mahler’s music: Lost in Translation’
1145 Zoltan Roman, ‘Decadent Transitions: Mahler, Modernism, and the fin de siècle’
1215-1315 Lunch and visit to exhibition and sound installation
1315-1400 Lunchtime concert: Emilie Capulet, piano works in the Viennese tradition (Studio 1, PATS)
Paper session 9. Culture and Interpretation (iv): Mahler and the Visual
1415 Bogumila Mika, ‘Mahler and the Art of "Secession style" as Seen in Symphony 4’
1445 Yulia Kreinin, ‘Mahler’s and Klee’s “Forms in Motion”: Dynamic Processes in Music and Visual Art’
1515 Eftychia Papanikolaou, ‘Ken Russell’s Mahler as Reception History’
1545 James Buhler, ‘Mahler and the Myth of the Total Symphony’
1615-1630 Afternoon tea/coffee
Paper session 10. Histories (ii): Deflecting Time
1630 Timothy Freeze, ‘The Topicality of Nostalgia: Multiplicity of Reference in the Posthorn Solos of Mahler’s Third’
1700 Thomas Peattie, ‘Songs of the Departed’
1730 Jeremy Barham, ‘Delusional History’
1815-1945 Dinner at Lakeside Restaurant
2000 Evening concert: Endymion Ensemble, works by Mahler, Korngold, Shostakovich and Schnittke (Studio 1, PATS)
An exhibition of Mahler-inspired paintings by Caroline Tate, ‘A Celebration of Mahler’, will be held on campus in the Lewis Elton Gallery during the conference, and this will be accompanied by a specially commissioned sound installation by Matthew Sansom, ‘spirit redux’, a multichannel generative composition derived from moments of stasis in Mahler’s symphonies.
Tickets for the concerts can also be purchased separately from the University box office: boxoffice@surrey.ac.uk
The conference is generously supported by the British Academy, The Royal Musical Association, the Institute of Musical Research, the Institute of Advanced Studies (University of Surrey), the Music & Letters Trust, and the Austrian Cultural Forum, London.