Literature and Music Research Group

Word and Music Studies: Ninth International Conference
Silence, Absence and Ellipsis in Words and Music
August 7–10, 2013
London, UK

Download this information in PDF format [29 KB].
Download the booking form [PDF, 162 KB].
The conference schedule and abstracts are now available [PDF, 435 KB].

It is our pleasure to invite you to London for the Ninth International Conference of the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA). The local organizers are Robert Samuels, of the Department of Music at The Open University, and Delia da Sousa Correa, of the Department of English at The Open University. The conference is held in association with The Institute of Musical Research, The Institute of English Studies, and the Literature and Music Research Group of The Open University.

The conference will be organized into three sections, the first being devoted to the primary theme of “Silence, Absence and Ellipsis in Words and Music”. The second section, “Surveying the Field”, involves papers that deal with general theoretical and methodological questions intrinsic to the established scholarly field of Word and Music Studies. The conference will also include a section of “Word and Music Studies Working Papers”. This section will include shorter papers which reflect work-in-progress in the field of Word and Music Studies. A total of nearly fifty participants from around the world will give papers and recitals over the four days of the conference, and we are confident that like previous conferences of the Association, this will be another significant event in the field. You can download the conference schedule and abstracts as a PDF file [178 KB].

Conference Venue

The conference will be held at the Senate House of the University of London, in Bloomsbury. Parallel sessions will run in The Chancellor’s Hall, The Court Room, and The Holden Room. Senate House is located within walking distance of the British Museum and the British Library, with copious local eating and accommodation facilities.

Conference Activities

The conference will open with a welcoming reception, followed by an inaugural concert by WMA members, from 6.00–8.30 p.m. on Wednesday 7 August. The reception will be held in the foyer of The Chancellor’s Hall in Senate House, and the concert will take place in the Hall itself. There will also be a river cruise on the Thames on the afternoon of Saturday 10 August.

BBC Promenade Concerts

The conference is taking place during the celebrated BBC Proms concerts, held at the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington (approximately 30 minutes travel from the conference venue). The conference schedule will allow participants, if they wish, to attend concerts at 7.00 p.m. and 10.15 p.m. on Thursday 8 August, 7.00 p.m. and 10.00 p.m. on Friday 9 August, and 8.00 p.m. on Saturday 10 August. Full concert and booking details are found at the Proms website.

Accommodation and travel

Download the conference circular for information about accommodation and travel to London.

Conference Fee

If you are a member of WMA, the conference fee is included in your annual membership subscription. For non-members, the conference fee is £30 UK sterling (£20 for students and unwaged). Single-day registration is available for £15 (£10 for students and unwaged). The fee includes the registration pack, attendance at conference papers and recitals, and refreshments. It does not include accommodation or meals. For the excursion on Saturday, an additional fee of £25 is payable.

Booking form

To book a place, download and complete the booking form [PDF, 186 KB]. Please send your completed booking form with a sterling cheque for the full amount made payable to the ‘University of London’ to Valerie James, Institute of Musical Research, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU. To arrive no later than Friday 5 July 2013.

Those registering from overseas who wish to pay by credit card should email music@sas.ac.uk so that we can email a credit card payment form to them.

Provisional List of Speakers and Topics

Section A: Silence, Absence and Ellipsis in Words and Music
Breatnach, Mary (Univ. of Edinburgh, UK)	“Silence and Music in Un coup de Dés”
Byrne Bodley, Lorraine (National University of Ireland Maynooth)	“Silence, Absence and Ellipsis in Schubert-Berio Rendering for Orchestra”
da Sousa Correa, Delia (The Open University, UK)	“Silent Music in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda”
Dayan, Peter (Univ. of Edinburgh, UK)	“The Inaudible Music of Dada”
Eggers, Katrin (Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover, Germany)	“The Breath of Pauses: Physical Conditions of Musical Silence”
Englund, Axel (Stockholm University, Sweden)	“’Und er gehorcht, indem er überschreitet’: Rilke, Rautavaara, and the Other Side of Song“
Fillerup, Jessie (University of Richmond, Virginia, USA)	“Lucia and Salome on Sunset Boulevard”
Gosine, C. Jane (Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada)	“Silence as Interpreter in the Sacred Music of Marc-Antoine Charpentier”
Halliwell, Michael (University of Sydney Conservatorium of Music)	"The Sound of Silence: A Tale of two operatic Tempests"
Heap, Matthew (American University, Washington, DC, USA)	“Silence and Ellipsis as Narrative Elements in Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia”
Hinz, Hannah (Stockholm University, Sweden)	“Silence, Sound and the Fragmentation of Personal Identity in August Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata”
Katschthaler, Karl (University of Debrecen, Hungary)	“Absence, Presence and Potentiality: John Cage’s 4’33’’ Revisited”
Kramer, Lawrence (Fordham University, New York, USA)	“Rosetta Tones: The Score as Hieroglyph”
Kuhn, Bernhard (Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pasadena, USA)	“Fragments, Silence, and Silencing in Luigi Nono’s Music Theater: Metareflection in Al gran sole carico d’amore (1975)?”
Kurth, Richard (Prof. of Music Theory, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada)	“Kurtág and the Vocality of Silent Amazement”
Laws, Catherine (University of York, UK)	“Beckett’s Buzzing: Fissures, Fragments … Fugues?
Matsumoto, Naomi (Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK)	“‘Ghost Writing’: An Exploration of Presence and Absence in Lucia di Lammermoor (1835)”
Melia, Nicholas (University of East Anglia, UK)	“Silentioso doloroso…lento rigoland – Alphonse Allais’s Marche funèbre incohérente and 19th-century ‘Silent Music’”
Rees, Jonathan (Stella Mann College, Bedford, UK)	“Between the Silences: Implications for the Listener at the Interface with Silence in Music from Haydn to Hip-Hop”
Rooley, Anthony (director of the Consort of Musicke, UK)	“Interpreting the Conscious Use of Silence in All Parts in the English Lute Song and Madrigal Repertoires 1590–1620”
Schirrmacher, Beate (University of Stockholm, Sweden)	“Mute Performances: Musical Ekphrasis, Gesture and Performative Aesthetics in Diderot’s Le neveu de Rameau, Eyvind Johnson’s Romantisk berättelse”
Schober, Regina (University of Mannheim, Germany)	“Silence as Fresh Sound in Imagist Poetry”
Stevens, Blake (College of Charleston, South Carolina, USA)	“Absence Effects and the Spectacular Imagination in the Tragédie en musique” ”
Stougaard Pedersen, Birgitte (University of Aarhus, Denmark)	“The General Pause and the Enjambement – Silence and Hesitation in Music and Poetry”
Wahlfors, Laura (Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, Finland)	“How to Play the Music of Absence?: The Romantic Aesthetics of Distance in Schumann’s Kreisleriana, Part 4”
Wolf, Werner (Karl-Franzens-Universität, Graz, Austria)	“How Does Absence Become Significant in (the Context of) Literature and Music?”
Section B: Surveying the Field
Dunkel, Mario (Unviersity of Dortmund, Germany)	“The Place of Jazz in Word and Music Studies”
Nogueira, Heverson (Universidade de Brasília)	“Some Aspects of Sung Word: The Brazilian Thought about the Relationship between Music and Word”
Petermann, Emily (University of Göttingen, Germany)	“The Film Musical as a Subject for Word and Music Studies”
Stricker, Jeppe (University of Aalborg, Denmark)	“Musical Form as Literary Gesture: Beyond the Sonata Principle”
C: Working Papers
Abbott, Helen (University of Sheffield, UK)	“Performing Baudelaire in absentia: voicing absent texts in Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite and Der Wein”
Brady, Clare (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)	“Words, Music and Mutability of Meaning in Berio’s Recital I (for Cathy)”
Cheng, Florence Chi-Suen (The Hong Kong Baptist University)	“The ‘Natural Aesthetics’ of Human Voice in Music and Poetry: A Study in Daniel- Lesur’s ‘Le Cantique des Cantiques’”
Dennerlein, Christoph (PhD, University of Göttingen, Germany)	“Beyond either Words or Music Alone: Emotional Expression in the Lied”
Dolman, Julia (Independent scholar, Toronto, Canada)	“The Performative Speech Act of the Unnamed Narrator: Uncovering Narrative Voice in the “Kreutzer” Genealogy”
Foster, Korre D. (Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, Tennessee, USA)	“The Rhetorical Implications of Charpentier’s Use of Silence and Absence”
Jurkowski, Nicholas (University of California at Santa Barbara, USA)	“Out of Context: Comparing Settings of Joyce’s ‘Strings in the Earth and Air’”
Lentsner, Dina (Capital University Conservatory, Columbus, Ohio, USA)	“Farewell, Dichterliebe …: Heine, Schumann, Dalos, Kurtág and the Intertext“
Lindekens, Katherina (University of Louvain, Belgium)	“Words and Music in English Restoration Opera: Albion and Albanius Versus King Arthur”
Liu Lai-ying, Jeannie (The Hong Kong Baptist University)	“Pictures into Music and The Reveal of the Unsaid: Rachmaninov’s The Isle of the Dead, Op. 29”
Nixon, Mark (The Open University, UK)	“Absent Subjects: Narratives of Realisation and Detection in Writing about Music”
Rowley, Carly Eloise (Liverpool Hope University, UK)	“Anthony Burgess as Adapter: from Telling to Showing in the Song Cycle – Man Who Has Come Through”
Street, Alan (University of Kansas, USA)	“Reading Stravinsky: A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer”
Watson, Anna (University of St. Andrews, UK)	“Tears in the Music Lesson: Adolescence, Identity and Gender in Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Wind Blows’ (1915)”
Wu, Yi-Yin (Ludwig-Maximilans-Universität, Munich, Germany)	“More Than Words Can Say: Intertextual Reception in the Unaccompanied Lied for Soprano Lady Lazarus (Poem by Sylvia Plath) by Aribert Reimann (1992)”

Literature & Music

Literature and Music Research Group

Word and Music Studies: Ninth International Conference Silence, Absence and Ellipsis in Words and Music August 7–10, 2013 London, UK