Music

The next OU Music Research Day will take place on 30 April 2019 in the OU’s London Office. The provisional programme is as follows:

10:30  Coffee

11:00  Natalie Burton – Structural pluralism in Gerald Finzi’s Earth and Air and Rain

11:30  Michael Busk – Manchester’s First Nineteenth-Century Musical Festival – 1828

12:00  Chris Grey – Musical beauty, God and the Church: historical-ecclesiological contexts

12:30  Lunch

13:30  Ann Grindley – Sites of Empowerment: Fin de Siècle Salon Culture and the Music of Cécile Chaminade

14:00  Paul Britten – Quadrille Bands and musical life in 19^th-century Brighton

14:30  Break

15:00  Tristan Harkcom – ‘The composer of Rienzi’ and ‘the Dresden Bloodbath’

15:30  Martyn Strachan – The Orchestra as an Indicator of Style in Sullivan’s Music

16:00  Coffee

To register, please contact Jacquie Green on FASS-ACEM-Music@open.ac.uk by Thursday 18^th April. Please advise Jacquie of any dietary requirements.

Several members of the Music Department joined students studying at every level, from Level 1 to the MA, for a Study Day at the Southbank Centre, London, on 19 March. The following review is by one of the participating students, Valerie Morris (a current A873 student).

Sir András Schiff joins in the applause for the OAE, who received a standing ovation at the conclusion of the concert.

This week saw the OU’s partner orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, give two concerts under the direction of Sir András Schiff.  On Tuesday 19th March OU music students from across all levels took part in a study day at the Southbank Centre run by OU music staff.

The first session featured two members of the orchestra, Nick Logie (viola), who gained his PhD with the OU, and Leo Duarte (oboe).  They explained and demonstrated how OAE musicians follow and lead in performance when playing without a conductor by listening and reacting to each other, and discussed such things as 19th century oboe tonalities, use of gut strings, and different placings of the lower strings sections of orchestras.

This all made sense when we watched the final rehearsal of Brahms’ 2nd piano concerto with Sir András conducting from the 1867 Blüthner piano: he has a masterful ease in conveying exactly how he wants the orchestra to sound, using very few words and gesturing with his arms and singing the phrasing he wants.

In the rest of the day, the OU’s Alex Kolassa and Martin Clarke led a session on Influence and Innovation, showing how much ‘old’ music is in ‘new’ music; Byron Dueck talked about current and future music modules, including Alex’s examples of modal writing in Metallica songs; and Bob Samuels gave a public pre-concert talk saying that Brahms’ relationship with Clara Schumann is the When Harry met Sally story in classical music.  Thank you to all involved.

At the evening’s concert (pairing the Brahms concerto with Schumann’s Symphony No.3 ‘Rhenish’) Sir András spoke directly to the audience, telling us playing without a conductor is like playing without the police, and sometimes it’s good not to feel safe!  It was a terrific performance.

This was a really enjoyable day.  My previous experiences of study days have been focussed on how much work I’d have to do for forthcoming exams or EMAs but this event was learning for learning’s sake as well as a chance to have a good chat with other students.

Naomi Barker in the recording studio

This week Naomi Barker interviewed award-winning South African composer and pianist Rashid Lanie about his work as a pianist, song writer and film music composer. The recording will be a resource for our new level 1 module A111 ‘Discovering the arts and humanities’. Block 3 of the module explores the theme of ‘crossing boundaries’ and includes a group of chapters on Sophocles’ Antigone, the South African play The Island by Fugard, Ntshona and Kani and protest music in South Africa. In addition to the interview with Rashid, students will be able to hear actor Mark Springer talking about performing in The Island and translator and director David Stuttard talking about his work on Antigone.

Rashid spoke eloquently about how, under the apartheid regime, music gave a voice to the politically disenfranchised black people of South Africa. He recounted how careful he had had to be in performing under the watchful eye of the police, especially music with words that might be deemed subversive. In that environment though, music was incredibly powerful in bringing people together and breaking down the barriers. Rashid also spoke about his work as a composer and in particular about his involvement in writing the song ‘The people want Mandela/Bafana Mandela’ – a collaboration with Ray Phiri, Jennifer Ferguson and Victor Ntoni. As a film composer, in writing the music for ‘Kalushi’ a film about the anti-apartheid activist Solomon Mahlangu, Rashid was musically able to tell his own story as he too had experienced being imprisoned as a student.

You can find out more about Rashid and listen to samples of his music on his website.

‘Discovering the arts and humanities’ starts in October 2019 and registration opens on 21 March. Find out more here here. You can also find out more about studying music at the Open University here