Symposium on Words, Music and Silence

A Symposium organised by the Literature and Music Research Group, The Open University, in partnership with University Music Bournemouth, on Friday 28^th June, 2024 at Bournemouth University (BH12 5BB). The day will conclude with a lecture recital exploring words, music, silence and disability given by the concert pianist Duncan Honeybourne, whose career has been shaped by his autism.

Call for Papers

The topic ‘Words, Music and Silence’ is conceived to allow investigation of how these elements are co-dependent, particularly in musical and verbal performance, but also in the silent practices of reading, writing and imagined listening. Paper proposals are invited that investigate how these elements, in combination, engage and matter to audiences (including public audiences, readers and academic researchers).

We invite proposals for papers of 15-20 minutes in length for the following panels:

PANEL 1: ‘The silence between words and notes’

Areas of possible interest: musical and literary lexis, reading and listening

• Silence as a structural component of musical and literary texts; is music ‘the silence between the notes’ (Debussy) and does this also apply to poetry?
• Readers and listeners; how do words, music, and silence operate across listening and reading experiences, including the reading of musical scores or the imagined spoken or sung performance of poetry?
• Words, music and silence in musicians’ reading and writers’ listening.

PANEL 2: ‘Words, music and silence beyond the page’

Areas of possible interest: Health and wellbeing, disability, digital humanities, screen media, performance

• Interactions of words, music, and silence in performance; how is silence central to musical, literary and visual communication?
• Words, music, silence and disability; disability as silence and voice.
• Reading and listening in the digital age

PANEL 3: ‘Voicing words, music and silence’

Areas of possible interest: creative writing, song, narrative, adaptation, opera and music for the stage

• Silent music, absent words; what is the impact of literary references to music that readers are expected to imagine, of wordless quotations from song melody in musical works or film, or of silent musical iconography in visual works?
• Beyond words: can music – in performance and as a literary or visual trope – narrate the silence between words and give voice to the unutterable?
• In what ways can music give voice to silent or absent characters? How does this play out in adaptations across different media? How might this transform reading and listening?

Digital Lightning Talks

In addition to paper proposals, we welcome proposals for lightning talks under the three panel topics described above, which may be incorporated into the symposium as digital artefacts. Selected contributors will be invited to submit a video recording of their proposed lightning presentation which may be shared with conference delegates and viewable beyond the symposium.

The following guidelines are offered:

• Talks should be around 800 words
• Talks should last no more than 7 minutes
• Talks should use a maximum of two PowerPoint (or similar) slides
• Presentations should be formatted and submitted as an MP4 file.

Submission of Proposals

Abstracts of 200 words are requested for panel papers. Please also provide a short biography (100 words) including any institutional affiliation and email address.

For lightning talks, please send us a very brief abstract (50 words) and include a note of your affiliation, if any, and email and web-page addresses.

Abstracts should be sent by Monday 29 April 2024 to FASS-ArtsHum-English@open.ac.uk

Symposium Convenors

Delia da Sousa Correa (The Open University)

Robert Samuels (The Open University)

Natalie Burton (OU & Bournemouth University)

Draft Symposium Programme

Image: Wassily Kandinsky, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons