UCD School of Music
Scoil an Cheoil UCD
NEWS REPORT FROM DECEMBER 2011
News
At the close of the first semester of the current academic session, it is a pleasure to record the following updates of news from the School.
Appointments
We are very pleased to announce that Dr Jaime Jones, Lecturer in Ethnomusicology, has been awarded tenure.
Performance
Two very successful concerts were given during the Semester by the UCD Symphony Orchestra (Astra Hall, 16 November) and the UCD Philharmonic Choir (St Bartholomew’s Church, Clyde Road). The UCD Choral Scholars will present ‘A Choral Celebration of Christmas’ at University Church, St Stephen’s Green on 20 and 21 December. For further details of these events, please consult: http://www.ucdchoralscholars.ie.
On 4 November, the Choral Scholars and Orchestral Scholars participated at a celebration to mark the launch of the UCD Ad Astra Scholars (artistic director, Desmond Earley) which took place during the UCD Foundation Day Dinner. On the same occasion, Irish composer Bill Whelan was awarded the Foundation Day Medal. A documentary on the UCD Symphony Orchestra, created and directed by graduates of the School Ruth O’Mahony Brady and Thomas Ivory, is now available on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqj4xTA27hI.
UCD Philharmonic Choir
UCD Symphony Orchestra
UCD Choral Scholars
Research
The seventh issue of The Musicology Review, edited by Liam Cagney and Shane McMahon, was launched on 11 November in the Royal Irish Academy of Music by Dr Gareth Cox. The international scope of the volume is attested by the fact that seven of the nine articles it contains are by contributors from Clare College, Cambridge, the City University of London, the Chinese University of Hong Kong [two articles], California State University, Long Beach, Goldsmiths College, University of London, and the University of Technology, Cape Town (South Africa). The UCD Musicology Prize this year was jointly shared by Stephen Graham (Goldsmiths) and Matthew D. Blackmar (California State).
Our congratulations to the editors, editorial board, reviewers and contributors in the achievement of such a remarkable issue. For further details please go to: www.themusicologyreview.com
UCD Press has announced that it will publish the Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland in 2012. Final preparations for the submission of the manuscript will be complete before the Christmas break.
News of Staff
Professor Julian Horton was much involved with the international Schubert Conference organized by an inter-institutional committee chaired by Dr Lorraine Byrne Bodley and held in association with the School in NUI Maynooth between 21 and 23 October: Professor Horton delivered a joint lecture with his brother, the pianist Tim Horton, on ‘Schubert’s Piano Sonata D.959 and the Performance of Analysis’ at the conference, preceded by a longer version of the same material at a memorable seminar in musicology in UCD chaired by Dr Frank Lawrence on 19 October. At Maynooth he also introduced and chaired the keynote address given by Professor Robert Hatten. Professor Horton also gave a guest seminar at the University of Liverpool on ‘Two-dimensional Sonata From in the Post-classical Piano Concerto’ in October and attended the Society for Music Theory annual conference in Minneapolis, where he delivered a paper on ‘Form and Syntax in the Post-Classical Piano Concerto’.
In November, Dr Wolfgang Marx’s György Ligeti: Of Foreign Lands and Strange Sounds (edited with Louise Duchesneau) was published by Boydell Press, Woodbridge (Surrey). The volume includes two chapters from members of the School: ‘”Make Room for the Grand Macabre!” The Concept of Death in György Ligeti’s Oeuvre’ by Dr Marx (pp. 71-84) and ‘The Bigger Picture: Ligeti’s Music and the Films of Stanley Kubrick’ by Dr Ciaran Crilly (pp.245-54). Dr Marx also recently published “Freund Heins Nachfolger! Viktor Ullmanns Oper Der Kaiser von Atlantis” in L’Art Macabre 12 (2011), pp.71-85 and a review of Hartmut Hein and Fabian Kolb (editors), Musik und Humor in Die Tonkunst 5/4 (2011), 559-60. In November 2011 Dr Marx began a three-year term as external examiner (MMUS) at the University of Liverpool.
Professor Thérèse Smith recently published “Lyrical Protest: Music in the History of African American Culture” in R. Hörmann and G. Mackenthun (editors), Bondage in the Cultural Contact Zone. Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Slavery and its Discourses. (New York, Berlin: Waxmann Verlag, 2010), pp.257-274. Several of her articles have also been published in Fintan Vallely (editor), The Companion to Irish Traditional Music, 2nd Edition (Cork: Cork University Press, 2011). She continues as an international research consultant to the AHRC-ESRC (UK) religion and society research project entitled “The Experience of Worship”.
Dr Jaime Jones delivered a guest seminar in the Department of Social Anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast on “Singing through Time and Space: Music and Pilgrimage in Maharashtra” in October. In the same month she gave a research seminar entitled “Between Timelessness and History: Music and Devotion in South Asia” for the Department of Music at University College Cork and in early November she was a delegate at the Society for Ethnomusicology annual conference in Philadelphia, Pa.
Dr Una Hunt recently published the following articles: “George Alexander Osborne and Wieniawski’s Irish Connections” in Henryk Wieniawski and the Bravura Tradition (Poznan, Poland: The Henryk Wieniawski Musical Society, Sept 2011), pp. 266-73; “The National Archive of Irish Composers: Creating a Digital Collection of Music from the National Library of Ireland” in Fontes Artis Musicae, 58/3 (Middleton, US: IAML, July-Sept 2011), pp. 266-73; “The Harpers’ Legacy: National Airs and Pianoforte Music” in Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, 6 (2010-11), pp. 3-53.
Two of Mr Desmond Earley’s orchestrations and arrangements were broadcast on RTE Radio 1 in October. In November, as continuo player with the Irish Baroque Orchestra directed by Monica Huggett, he took part in the Ardee Festival. He is currently touring with the Irish Baroque Orchestra in the same capacity in performances of Messiah and works by Telemann, Stradella, Corelli and others.
Professor Harry White was awarded the Associazione Amistade “Premio Istranza” at the Archaeological Museum in Olbia, Sardinia in November for his work on Thomas Moore. His guest lectures since September include ‘Death and the Maiden: Woody Allen and the Late Schubert’, International Schubert Conference, NUI Maynooth (October); ‘The Invention of Irish Music: Remembering Grattan Flood’, International Symposium on Franjo Kuhac and Musical Historiography in Europe, University of Zagreb (October); ‘The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland: an Introduction’, University of Leeds (November); ‘The Imagined Unities of Thomas Moore, Olbia (as above). Also in November, he published Musical Theatre as High Culture? , co-edited with Vjera Katalinic and Stanislav Tuksar (Zagreb, Croatian Musicological Society, 2011).