Events archive
Composing the Historical launch event on Zoom
Wednesday 25 November 16:00 until 17:00
Online through Zoom
Speaker: Chaired by Mimi Haddon
Wed 25 November from 4pm to 5pm
Composing the Historical launch event on Zoom
Guests include Judith Weir CBE, Prof Shirley Thompson OBE, Dr Tom Armstrong, Rowland Sutherland, Evelyn Ficarra
Chaired by Mimi Haddon
Launch of new REFRAME website on historical texts in music today
A collection of nine original in-depth composer interviews, with an introductory essay by Ed Hughes
Edited by Ed Hughes, Evelyn Ficarra and Mimi Haddon
Free, but please email Ed Hughes in advance of the event to register and obtain zoom link (e.d.hughes@sussex.ac.uk)
Background to 'Composing the Historical'
Through interviews engaging diverse voices of composers doing significant work in the field, this project asks: how are elements of the historical voiced in contemporary British composition?
We interviewed nine composers to ask them why and how their work engages with existing texts. When this happens, are composers simply appropriating existing forms in order to prop up their compositions, like the twentieth century’s ‘neo-classicism’? Or does this work imply nuanced affinities with historical methods and practices that enrich musical language today with perspectives and ‘voices’ from other times? Does this work speak to questions of modernism and post-modernism in contemporary composition? And how does transformation work in their music, moving the material from exercises in pastiche towards novel and original expression offering new musical experiences for today’s audiences?
Each of the interviews, with Evelyn Ficarra, Roxanna Panufnik, Shirley Thompson OBE, Judith Weir CBE, Rowland Sutherland, Kerry Andrew, Martin Butler, Tom Armstrong and Ed Hughes, produces different and individual responses. Each is concerned with the tension between historical model and the experience of writing through it. Ultimately the past is seen as a place that may be full of affect, but is not ‘reproducible’. Instead, one ‘opens’ the text in order to compose through it, which drives one back to the present.
Posted on behalf of: School of Media, Arts and Humanities
Last updated: Wednesday, 21 October 2020