Musical performance is a research field that is gathering great momentum in recent years. You will find in this page information about five upcoming conferences on performance. The two last conferences have a call for papers. By the way, I attend the CHARM conference and give a paper at the conference on Adorno.

(1) CHARM Symposium 6: Playing with recordings

Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, 11-13 September 2008

How do musicians use recordings and what has been their impact? In this final CHARM symposium we explore the attitudes towards recordings of performers and teachers, along with the ways in which recordings contribute to both the maintenance of musical culture and processes of style change. Do recordings prompt or inhibit style change? Have they resulted in stylistic convergence, as is often claimed? And what is the relationship between such processes and the technological or business history of recording? Might technology and business practices be seen as the principal drivers of performance style in the age of recordings? In addressing the interface between recordings and the professional practice of performance, the symposium will prepare the transition to CHARM’s successor centre from April 2009, the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice.

PROGRAMME

The symposium will run from lunchtime on Thursday 11th through to lunchtime on Saturday 13th September. Speakers and panellists will include John Carewe, Mine Dogantan-Dack, Martin Elste, Anthony Gritten, Pekka Gronow, Peter Martland, Nick Morgan, Ian Partridge, David Patmore, and Jeremy Summerly. Further scheduling details and abstracts will be posted online very shortly.

(2) “Formulate with the greatest care”: Adorno and Performance

13-14 September 2008
Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK

A conference based around readings of Adorno’s Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction (TTMR) and its contexts, interpretations, and uses.

(3) Minimalism, Post-Opera, and Performance

GOLDSMITHS, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
MINIMALISM, POST-OPERA AND PERFORMANCE
SATURDAY 13 SEPTEMBER 2008
10.00 - 5.00

A one-day colloquium organised in association with the Society for
Minimalist Music

(4) The Musical Body: Gesture, Representation and Ergonomics in Performance – call for papers!

The Musical Body: Gesture, Representation and Ergonomics in Performance

Institute of Musical Research, Senate House, Malet Street, London, in
association with the Open University, the University of Durham and the
Orpheus Instituut, Gent, the University of Sussex, the Royal College of
Music and the IMR Music & Science group

22-24 April 2009

The aim of this interdisciplinary conference is to bring together
researchers from widely divergent fields to share perspectives on the
physicality of performance, and its visual representation, in musics of
all kinds. From connections between musical performance and health, and
musical performance as dance, to representations of the ‘ideal’ posture
in historical treatises and the lampooning of soloists in caricature,
the conference will explore the ways in which music and the body
interact, both with ease (such as where composition or improvisation are
explicitly ergonomic) and in tension (where physical strain is etched
into a musical composition or acts as a marker of authenticity in a
performance style). Finally, it is pertinent to consider those areas in
which physical ease in performance is either obstructed (eg. via
performance anxiety) or results from the creative adaptation of standard
practices (eg. as a response to disability).

Sessions will be built around themes, with presentations grouped as far
as possible in ways that bring together a variety of historical and
generic areas of study. The following list of themes and topics is
indicative only:

· Music and health
· Iconographical representation
· History of performance style
· Organology
· The boundaries of the idiomatic and the ergonomic in composition
· Entrainment, ensembles and community
· Gesture and embodied cognition
· Stage presence and performance anxiety

A Call for Papers and Lecture-recitals will be issued in the early autumn.

Programme committee:

Katharine Ellis (IMR)
Martin Clayton (Open University)
Mieko Kanno (Durham University; Orpheus Instituut, Gent)
Nicholas Till (University of Sussex)
Aaron Williamon (Royal College of Music; IMR Music & Science group)

(5) The Performer’s Voice: An International Forum for Music Performance & Scholarship – call for papers!

29 October – 2 November 2009

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, National University of Singapore 

Symposium Partners:

Peabody Institute, John Hopkins University
Royal Northern College of Music 

The Performer’s Voice aims to stimulate discussion, develop ideas, and disseminate research on music performance from a range of angles. Though interdisciplinary in scope the symposium’s distinct focus derives from an uncompromising emphasis on the act of performance, the role of the performer, and the professional performer’s perspective. The program will feature plenary and parallel sessions of lecture-recitals, papers with live or recorded performance, open rehearsals, panel discussions, and workshops.  

Keynote Speaker:

Prof. Richard Taruskin (University of California, Berkeley)

Guest Panelist, ‘Asian Voices’:

Prof. Kishore Mahbubani (National University of Singapore)

Plenary Presenters:

Prof. John Rink (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Dr. Elisabeth Le Guin (University of California, Los Angeles)
Dr. Stephen Emmerson (Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University)
Dr. Helena Gaunt (Guildhall School of Music and Drama)
Dr. Aiyun Huang (McGill University)
Dr. Thomas Hecht (Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music) 
Qian Zhou (Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music)
Qin Li Wei (Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music)  

Call for presentations & more information available at: www.performersvoice.org

Symposium Convener: Dr. Anne Marshman

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There are several reasons why to write a book review. It is a good way to gain experience in writing. Publishing reviews is easier than publishing articles. One is not expected to contribute something completely new to the world of research. When you submit your review to a journal you usually receive feedback from the editor and that can improve the level of your writing. Another reason is that it may help you learn the book more thoroughly than if you would just read it. Good writing is a form of teaching. When one teaches something, one remembers it forever. Moreover, this is a way that other scholars in the field (especially the one whose book your will review) will know you and what you think. In other words, this is a way to start making a name in the field. Finally, if you where asked to review a book, although you will probably not be paid for it, you will receive the book. In this post I will mention some of the things that can help you write a good book review.

Read the book

Read review written by others

Do not be too critical

Balance your criticism

Show your personal reading

Be helpful

Listen to the comments of the editor

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Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction

In the this post I have gathered a few quotations from Theodor W. Adorno’s notes on performance collected in the recently published book Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction (Cambridge UK and Malden MA USA: Polity, 2006). The notes here are from the section titles ‘NOTES I’ on pp. 1-7. The notes do not appear in the order as they do in the book.

Reproduction

Title: ‘Notes towards a theory of musical reproduction’. The word ‘reproduction’ (and not performance) in the title of the study puts emphasis on the idea that one not merely performs, one reproduces something that exists a priori. This is very important since it reveals one of the main concerns of this study.

Hidden beneath the surface

‘True reproduction is the x-ray image of the work. Its task is to render visible all the relations, all aspects of context, contrast, and construction that lie hidden beneath the surface of the perceptible sound’. The idea mentioned in the title is developed here. Performance is an ‘x-ray image’ of a hidden construction. The word ‘hidden’ and ‘construction’ are important as we will see in a moment.

‘Perhaps this is the philosophical sense of the ‘x-ray image’ - to imitate all that is hidden.’ The performer needs to reveal what is hidden and then to imitate it in his or her playing. ‘The objectivity of reproduction presupposes depth of subjective perception, otherwise it is merely the frozen imprint of the surface.’ Here Adorno suggests a kind of listening that is not concentrated on the moment, but on ‘depth’ and hidden construction.

Analysis and performance

‘Precise analysis as a self-evident precondition of interpretation. Its canon is the most advanced state of compositional-technical insight.’ Since the construction is hidden the performer must reveal it through analysis. The word ‘construction’ mentioned in the quotation above is connected to ‘compositional insight’ here. Analysis is focused on the score and when Adorno speaks about context he relates to any context that might help understanding the notes in the score of the composition. Much is left outside of the game: style, playing fashion, tradition, the wish or insight of specific performers, current cultural and social issues. ‘Whereas the [musical] sense is not absorbed within the phenomenon, the possibility of its representation … consists exclusively in the phenomena. But this means: within their context. Fulfilling the sense of music means nothing other than rendering all aspects of the context visible.’

Against ‘beautiful sound’

Since the revelation of hidden construction is the goal, a beautiful sound for its own sake is almost useless. Adorno wrote in ‘Reflexionen über Musikkritikä’ [Reflections over music criticism] from 1967 the following: ‘I recall once telling my friend Rudolf Kolisch that I thought the new cellist in his quartet had a revolting tone, and Kolisch answered: “But that’s the best thing about him”. (see endnote 10 p. 237). ‘The negation of the “beautiful tone” is the true achievement of all musical mimesis’. ‘The elimination of the sensual pleasure at sound is the idiosyncrasy in which the death of interpretation asserts itself.’

Silent music making

Since all the truth is contained in the score, Adorno develops the concept of ‘silent music making’: ‘Development of the ideal of silent music-making, ultimately the reading of musical texts, in connection with falling silent (NB the utter destruction of the sensual phenomenon of music through mass reproduction). Playing from memory – ‘thinking the music to oneself’ – as a preliminary stage to this.’

Since ‘silent music making’ is the ideal, performance will always fall short of such reading: ‘It is this possibility – playing complex chamber music from memory, as inaugurated by Kolisch, and as asserting the absolute primacy of the text over its imitation – in comparison to which essentially all “music-making” already sounds antiquted… Cf. Schumann’. The editor of the book notes that Adorno is referring to Schumann’s aphorism ‘Das öffentliche Auswendigspielen’ (‘Playing from Memory in Public’). Schumann argues that playing from memory ‘will always testify to the great power of the musical spirit.’ He asks: ‘Why put fetters on the feet if the head has wings? Do you not know that a chord played from a score, no matter how freely it may be struck, does not sound even half as free as one played from imagination?’ Schumann concludes: ‘I am like that philistine who, when the virtuoso’s music fell from the stand and he played on calmly nonetheless, exclaimed triumphantly: “Look, look! This is a high art! He can play it from memory!”’. According to Schumann, real performance falls short of imagined performance. It seems that the ‘real’ performer is one that can imagine the a priori object so well, that he or she do not need a score. Schoenberg advised the Kolisch Quartet to play from memory. He was also the one who wrote several letters to conductors praising their will to make many rehearsals, arguing that people who do so have a clear image in their mind of the music. In other words, Adorno and Kolisch are echoing Schoenberg’s view on this subject. 

Schoenberg’s attitude to the text versus my own view

‘Two fundamentally incorrect notions of the nature of musical interpretation need to be refuted: 1) that of the musical text as a set of performance instructions 2) that of the musical text as the fixing of the imagined. In a more profound sense, it is not the work that is the function of the imagination, but rather vice versa (derive from the subject-object dialect of the work. NB also the epistemological argument of the unknownness of the imagined – “thing-in-itself”. NB Schoenberg’s attitude to the text versus my own view. Yet it must be said that the ideal of the work incorporates the imagined and the performance instructions as extremes of the spectrum).’

Organicism

‘herein lies dissolution of the natural, “organic” aspect of music, which is a mere social appearance’. It seems that Adorno, unlike Schoenberg, did not believe in the concept of organicism. I will have to check this point as I further read the book.

Conference on Adorno

Byron will be giving a paper titled ‘Schoenberg’s or Adorno’s aesthetics of performance?’ in a conference on Adorno and Performance, 13-14 September 2008, Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK

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06 Hanns Eisler — Elegie 1939, poem by Bertolt Brecht

Hanns Eisler - Nonett nr.1, Variationen

This video shows some of the paintings of Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg painted self portraits, portraits of other people (some very famous such as Mahler), caricatures, nature, etc. I found especially impressive the paintings of “gazes” and some of the portraits. The video is very good: the choice of paintings, the way some of the paintings are presented side by side with photos of people, and the quotations by Schoenberg and others. The Arnold Schoenberg Center recently made a catalogue of Schoenberg’s paintings which can be obtained via their website www.schoenberg.at

When I used to be a student in the Tel-Aviv University, Leon Schidlowsky said that Schoenberg was a bad painter. Looking at this video I feel far from this opinion. What is clear to me is that these paintings a extremely valuable for anyone who wishes to understand the period and cultural surroundings of Schoenberg.  

In 1921 Schoenberg drew two caricatures of performers in embarrassing Positions (you can see them in the video). In one you can see the pianist’s body twisting in an absurd manner while playing the piano. The pianist is smiling with closed eyes while the head is in a position reaching upwards. Note that the pianist is playing without a score. It seems as if Schoenberg is mocking exaggerated romantic expressive movements, which he might  have seen as belonging to a past era.

In the other caricature Schoenberg drew a pianist in an opposite manner: inactive, sitting loosely on the piano chair and staring at the keyboard. The performer, who sits like a sack of potatoes while starring at the score, seems musically impotent. One might suspect that the lines that Schoenberg drew near the legs of the pianist imply an obscene gesture. In this period Schoenberg felt threatened by the possibility that his will would be overridden by performers expressing themselves.

On the other hand, Schoenberg wrote elsewhere that the interpretation of the performer is extremely important. After he immigrated to USA he wrote several documents that show an increasing awareness to the importance of performers as creative artists.  

Schoenberg had a complex and at times contradictory attitude towards performers and performance. In the book I am currently writing I analyze these contradicting aspects.

Related posts

Arnold Schoenberg videos

The Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna had uploaded many interesting videos to Youtube.com

You can find the videos at the following link: http://youtube.com/user/ascvideo

Here are three videos so that you can have an impression of what you can find there. It is recommended to see all of them at the same time

Related posts

Arnold Schoenberg as painter

Joseph Auner has successfully demonstrated that although many supporters of and objectors to Arnold Schoenberg’s music had described the composer as elitist, his relation to the public was complex. Many of his compositions from the 1920s simultaneously participate in and challenge contemporary popular genres. Auner claims that ‘the image of an uncompromised Schoenberg making no concessions to the performer or listener is … mistaken.’ (Joseph Auner, ‘Schoenberg and His Public in 1930’, in ed. Walter Frisch, Schoenberg and His World (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1999).

I have just read an interesting letter Schoenberg wrote in 1930 to Dr. Flesch from Radio Berlin. In this letter he suggests a radio program where there will be a ‘confrontation of divergent opinions and the author’s remark on them.’ Schoenberg suggests that the program will include parts that will be written in advance and a ‘free discussion’ part. Schoenberg’s suggestion was adopted and I think that there is such a radio recording, with Schoenberg as the author, which exists (perhaps in the Schoenberg Center in Vienna). It is amazing that Schonberg writes that ‘for years I had the idea of getting someone to start a periodical in which the public could express opinion in the manner described above’. Are we evident here of an insight into the future were online journals will enable comments of the readers? In one of my previous posts I reviewed some of the current online music journals and suggested how the online music journal of the future will look like. I hope that the guys in Music Theory Online (or any other online journal) will pick up the glove.

In the last two decades musicology and music theory are moving from text based research towards methodologies that include wider cultural and social contexts. One of the results of this shift is the need of scholars to include sound recordings and other multimedia features in the presentation of their research. This post will review some of the online music journals where one can publish and enjoy the vast possibilities offered by the web.

Before I will review the journals I would like to state briefly some of the advantages of publishing online:

More people read online articles
Search engines such as Google constantly scan the web and index any new information that appears on websites. When people search the web the search engines aim to offer them the most relevant information. In practice, this means that they are working for you for free. They bring you audience on a daily basis to your online articles.

More people quote your online articles
As a result of this, there is more chance that people will find your article and react to it. This is true also in the scholarly world. Today, any scholar who respects himself will use, not only university catalogs, but also the search engines and other online resources to find articles on music. Publishing on the web has the potential of making people quote your articles more often. In the academy, the more you are quoted, the more you are appreciated.

The medium is the message
Using the web offers you the possibility of linking to other resources, adding sound, video and other multimedia features. Music Theory Online is the most advance journal that is consciously attempting to implement these features.

Social reaction
Unfortunately, there is no online journal that is using the web as a truly interactive tool. In the Web 2.0 age, the internet is an excellent medium for scholars and other people to react (comments on articles, forums, sharing possibilities (such as Stumbleupon)) to the work of one and other in other formats than articles. We are still waiting for MTO or a new journal to take the initiative and implement these features.

A kleine disadvantage
Having said all this, there are some disadvantages in online publishing. One is the fact that it is hard to read an article on the web. The result is a kind of scan through reading that gives less attention to what the author wrote. Very few readers bother to print the article and fully read it. There are probably other disadvantages that I did not think of (feel free to comment below).

It seems to me that the disadvantage is negligible in comparison to the advantages that I just stated. This and the fact that my research often includes sound examples leads me to publish most of my articles in online journals.

I have gathered some links to online journals on music that can be helpful for anyone who wishes to find places to publish an article. In the following I will review some of these journals:

Music Theory Online
If you want a high level peer-reviewed scholarly journal on music you should first turn to Music Theory Online (MTO). This journal is live and kicking (not like most of the online journals that stopped publishing several years ago, or publish very rarely). MTO encourages the use of web features such as scans of sound examples in impressive formats, the use of recordings and probably anything that the web can offer. The articles are published as web pages (and not pdf of doc files). This is better for the search engines indexing. Yet, it is not easy to read through these long articles on the computer screen. Research shows that people do not usually read more than 600 words on one web page. The printing possibilities are still something that needs improvement in MTO. As mentioned above, that would be wise to include things like commenting, forum, web 2.0 sharing and other social features that can be useful in creating interaction between people and help the information spread on the web.

Journal of Music and Meaning
This journal is less popular and prestigious than MTO. Unlike MTO which includes everything. M&M encourages articles that deal with the meaning of music. It “encourages any multidisciplinary research on meaning that is able to challenge conceptions of music, or research that explores the notion of meaning by the study of musical phenomena.” It is a peer-reviewed journal and it has a forum (which is not very active)

Min-Ad and JSMI
These journals are local journals (in the sense that most people who publish there are locals). Min-Ad is from Israel and JSMI is from Ireland. They publish many kinds of things. JSMI attempts more than Min-Ad to be international by approaching authors from other countries. Another reason to speak about these two journals in one breath is the fact that their articles are published in pdf format. This has the advantage of easy printing in a professional format. There is the stated above disadvantage of being less friendly to the search engine robots (these articles therefore attract less web visitors).

Long live Gamut
Gamut is a new online journal on music. It is peer-reviewed online journal of the Music Theory Society of the Mid-Atlantic. Journals need money for editing and other activities, and only some rich universities have such possibilities. This is why most journals die after several issues. We hope that Gamut will have a different destiny.

Ethnomusicology Online - EOL and Journal of Film Music
There are journal that deal with very specific areas. EOL focuses on ethnomusicology and JFM on film music. If you have an article that falls in one of these areas, it would be wise to check these places first.

ECHO and British Postgraduate Musicology
If you are a student you should be aware that publishing is something that you would like to start sooner rather than later. This will help you find a job later on. ECHO and British Postgraduate Musicology are two places where students can publish. I must admit that when I started to publish online I approached MTO. Tina Ramnarine advised me: “Always aim high. Start with the most prestigious journal or publishing house and then approach the others”. Having said this, I did publish in local journals such as Min-Ad and Tav+ in order be locally known and support the latter journal in its first steps.

Semi online journals: RMA
There are many journals that have web pages with some information about their non-web articles and activities. Some journals publish online only abstracts and/or selected articles. The feeling is that the “real thing” is the paper journal. The Royal Music Association Journal does not pretend to be an online journal. However, Nicholas Cook arranged that it will have the possibility to add sound examples on the web. So one can read the paper article and then turn to the web to hear the sound recordings.

Other issues to consider
Before submitting your article to an online journal it would be wise to look who is sitting on the editorial board (this is true also for non-online journals). In order to avoid the process of being rejected (see Zoë Lang post on the challenges of getting published as a young scholar) by editors who are not in favor of your kind of scholarship, read or at least go through some of their articles.

Some journals, like JMSI, request the surfer to register before being able to read an article. This process discourages many surfers from going on and accessing the article. For the editors of journals registration might seem a small matter comparing to the advantages of reading the articles. However, for the web surfers this might mean going on to other sites.

How will look future online journals on music
There is a feeling that musicologists are still thinking in paper format when they create a journal of write on the web. Here are some points for those who will create the online music journal of the future:

(1) The will include text formats that will be friendly both for search engines and human readers.
(2) They will include possibilities of commenting and forum discussions.
(3) They will include possibilities of sharing information between users and sites.
(4) They will use all of the advantages of multimedia presentations on music and music related information.

Please believe me when I write that it was one of the best conferences that I have attended. Due to traffic jams I missed the first hour of so of the IMS conference. I heard two papers: one by Shulamit Marom and the other by Alona Sagi. Both were very interesting. They made me think, and this is something that I cannot say about many of the papers that I heard in other conferences. Moreover, they both presented sound recordings, and this is something that is often absent from discussions about music. You probably all know the lectures that speak about music in a highly detailed manner, assuming that everybody knows about what performance you one is speaking about, and neglecting the act of listening to the recording with the audience.

Shulamit Marom made a distinction between “Mandate songs” that were written in Tel-Aviv and other that were written in the “Yeshuv” (elsewhere). David Halperin suggested that making a distinction between the two categories will not stand scrutiny in many cases. I have little knowledge about Zemer to know whether Halperin is right. I did wonder whether our contemporary thinking of Tel-Aviv as a “bubble” that is disconnected from the rest of Israel, especially in relation to the territories and the second war in Lebanon, affected the categorization that Shulamit Maron suggested to us in her research. Anyway, Shulamit Marom’s presentation was very clear and enjoyable. It is possible to see that she is a very gifted lecturer.

Alona Sagi examined the improvisation of Miles Davies in “Walkin’” during the 50s and 60s. She observed that as time passed there was a change from “vertical thinking” to “linar thinking” on the one hand, and a tendency towards “free jazz”, on the other hand. She mentioned the presence of young and experimental musicians in the 60s as something that stimulated this change. Sagi’s transcriptions were impressive and it was fun reading them while listening to the music and hearing her comments. I am using the word “fun” on purpose, since enjoying a paper is something that should be taken for granted. It was a pity that she did not manage to finish her paper due to time limit. Although she blamed it on technical issues of handing the CD, I think that a well prepared paper would predict such problems and avoid them. In the next few days I plan to write a post on “How to give a paper in conferences: useful tips”. I wondered whether there are more social and cultural issues that affected the technical change that Sagi described in the performance of Miles Davis. I enjoyed listening to this music after so many years.

After that session, there was a general meeting of the society. It was sad to see how much money was spent on the internet site of the society. Prof. Edwin Seroussi rightly argued that three years ago it was reasonable to pay such sums for buliding a website, while today websites (at least ones on the level that was presented) are constructed almost for free. I plan to write a post about the IMS website and what I see as possibilities for the future.

The second part of the conference was devoted to “what there is and what there is not to read in Hebrew in Music”. I could not stay until the end of the conference. I had to leave an hour earlier so I did not manage to hear the paper given by Prof. Judith Cohen and people that spoke thereafter. This session was simulations very interesting and disappointing. It was fascinating to see how people deeply care about the miserable situation that there are almost no books to read in Hebrew (most of them are not updated and out of print). Some of the comments were truly illuminating (I will come back to them in a moment).

The “paper” given by Gila Flamm was disappointing. It was mainly an improvisation that amounted to a presentation of “facts” by browsing through items in the National Libraries catalog. There was little information given on the nature of the books that were mentioned, and of the frequency that people read them. There was no attempt to categorize the types of readers and the various manners that people read Hebrew books on music. There was no discussion on the history of institutions approaching the library for such books. Is this information not available?

The paper given by Elisheva Rigby had few interesting points. She said that we must be able to explain to ourselves why writing about music is essential to Israeli culture if we wish to convince others. Her argument was based on the idea that any knowledge and culture are based on discourse. She mentioned the myth of the composer at the top of the creative musicians, the performers as those who could not compose, the conductors as those who could not play an instrument, and the musicologists and critics at the bottom of the hierarchy, the perfect impotents, as those who could not do anything but talk. This myth, as Rigby said, is based on the idea of “originality” that is initiated from one source. Postmodern views demonstrate how the construction of meaning is done in a social network. In other words, the hierarchy is different and every cultural agent contributes in potentially significant ways. It seems to me that the myth of the “genius composer” is, unfortunately, sustained also among many musicologists in Israel and the world. This is why performance is regarded by many as a marginal and unimportant activity in relation to composing. The composer Zippi Fleisher said in the conference something like “what can one do, it all starts with the composer, and then one performs it, and then one writes about it”. This is an old fashioned and anachronistic view of what is happening in musical culture. Beethoven would never be famous if it would not be for music critics and musicologists who wrote about him and elevated him as a Romantic icon. We would not hear Beethoven the way we do, and he would not symbolize what he does, without the words that were written on him.

In my blog there is a poll asking why there are almost no books on music in Hebrew. Many people blamed it on the academy who demands that books will be written in English. Prof. Don Haran speculated in the conference why is it possible that the French and the Italians would never think writing in a language different than their own, and we seem to find it natural to write in English. This comment was thought provoking.

Prof. Yoash Hirshberg explained how disappointing it was to find that his book on Paul Ben-Haim is not available anymore. He was especially disappointed that his publisher Am-Oved did not find it important enough to keep a few copies of the book. He compared the Israeli publisher with Oxford University Press that published one of his books in two prints and then kept an electronic copy for anyone who might be interested. There was bitterness in his voice from the attitude of Am-Oved, whom he called “a commercial publication house” and he ended his comment by saying that in the present situation he has no motivation for writing anything more in Hebrew.

As mentioned about, I could not stay for the last session. The first session of the second part, which I just described, was not well organized. The speakers were not well-prepared (in England it is considered not serious to give a paper without reading from a text that was prepared in advance). Elisheva Rigbi gave herself too much liberty in commenting on the comments of others, something that took too much time of the session.

This session, was however, successful. It was interesting for me to hear the comments that some of them I have mentioned above. One of the fascinating comments in this session and the one before, were made my Prof. Ruth Katz. She stressed again and again that we must define our goals before we take action. It is useless to speak about low attendance of members and that fact that there are almost no students who find it important to attend the IMS conference (I agree that they must be forced to attend by making their presence obligatory for finishing their studies), if the IMS in general and Min-Ad in particular do not define their goals. With goals well-defined much can be achieved with limited energy. Without it, one is lost. It was wonderful to hear that an evening is organized in honor of her 80th birthday.

The conference, it seems to me, was successful. I wounder if any practical points for action were defined during the last session. It would be useful that in future conference smaller groups will be organized in round tables so that there will be more space for interaction. In any case, it is wonderful that Elisheva Rigbi, Rivka Elkushi and others initiated and organized this conference on around this important theme.

I will be glad if anyone who attended the conference will comment on it or on what I have written above. I am especially interested in knowing what happened in the last part that I could not attend. One of the reasons that I opened this blog is to attribute to the Israeli discourse on music. My assumption is that if we want a discourse to occur we must actively contribute to it. So please take a few minutes and comment by filling the form below or by sending me your comment for publication in this forum.

Related posts:
Here it comes מה יש ומה אין לקרוא על מוסיקה בעברית
Call for papers “What there is and what there is not to read about music in Hebrew”
Response to Dr Elisheva Rigbi’s second comment: are we normal?
Why my Blog is in English: an answer to Dr. Elisheva Rigbi
We seem to fail doing the very same thing in music

See also
Article on the conference published in Achbar Ha-Ir

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The program of the conference מה יש ומה אין לקרוא על מוסיקה בעברית? “What is and what there is not to read about music in Hebrew” was announced today. The program has some papers that seem very interesting. מושב ב’\1: מוסיקה “אחרת” seems especially interesting. Alona Sagi will speak about the improvisation of Miles Davis in the recordings of “Walkin’” and Shulamit Marom will speak about Tel-Aviv songs during the British Mandat (1920-1948). Another promising paper will be given by Asaf Sheleg titled “פוליפוניות אונטולוגיות: בין היהודי לישראלי במוסיקה הישראלית האומנותית” (Ontological polyphonies: between the Jewish and the Israeli in Israeli art music).

It is always the second part
The second part of the conference which is devoted to the burning question of Hebrew literature (scholarly, semi-scholarly and non-scholarly) is unclear. Gila Flamm will give a report of what exists in the library. This has potential to be very interesting, providing that the information will be more than descriptive. It would be very interesting to know not only what books exists but also what books are being read all the time and what books simply gather dust on the shelves. This could be valuable information that could help publishers and “decision makers” decide where to invest their money.

I wrote that the second part is unclear since the titles of the papers/discussions do not say too much about the content. What does “education” stand for? Is it only to educate the two and a half students that study music today, or are we speaking about educating the government, academy, book publishers, the rich people who donate money, and the general public?

What seems as a potential problem, is that the answer to the acute problem of almost no books in Hebrew on music, seems to be known to the conference organizers. It would be perhaps better to wait and see what comes out of the conference and research of others before one jumps into conclusion. Most important, I hope that the conference will result not only with interesting papers and conversations, but also with operative actions in order to change this miserable situation.

A tale of two women
I was once invited by Áine Heneghan to give a paper in the 2005 Dublin International Conference on Music Analysis, in Ireland. Since it was an international conference with important participants from around the world (Carl Schachter, Jonathan Dunsby, and many others), Áine was very busy (she was one of the two people that I know of, who organized the conference). I asked her “are you also giving a paper in the conference?” She answered “We decided that the organizers of the conference will not give papers in this conference so that people will no say that it has bad taste that we give papers while other people are rejected from speaking in the conference”. I felt that this is indeed an admirable behavior (a year or two before I was present in a UK conference where the organizer gave two papers!). We have much to learn from Áine Heneghan.

Related posts:
Call for papers “What there is and what there is not to read about music in Hebrew”
Response to Dr Elisheva Rigbi’s second comment: are we normal?
Why my Blog is in English: an answer to Dr. Elisheva Rigbi
We seem to fail doing the very same thing in music
Next post: Review of the IMS conference 2008: what there is and what there is not to read in Hebrew in Music