Music and the Melodramatic Aesthetic
Call for Papers
Conference, University of Nottingham (5-7 September 2008)
The early nineteenth-century stage genre of melodrama, as exemplified
by Pixérécourt's mélodrames à grand spectacle, expressed the moral
struggle between good and evil through the interrelationship of music,
speech, gesture and tableau in scenes of high emotion. This cross-disciplinary conference (Music, Theatre, Film, Art History, Philosophy) is
the culmination of an AHRC-funded Research Workshop exploring
melodrama as a performance process and an aesthetic, and tracing the
nature of its influence on later nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
drama - including opera, ballet, pantomime and early sound and film
recordings.
The keynote speaker will be Prof Jacqueline Waeber (Duke University).
Individual papers and session proposals are invited on (though not
restricted to) the following topics:
The gestural language of melodrama
opera, ballet, silent film
Performance materials (including treatises, manuals, images, recordings) Gestural and musical clichés The high/low divide The communication process between actors/singers and audience Ethics and aesthetics The evolution of melodrama through the nineteenth century Tableaux Static/kinetic moments Gesture and movement in music Performative processes Excess Sonic/visual spectacle Body-voice-orchestra as locus of meaning Sound vs. image Cultural transfer
Please send proposals for 20-minute papers (max. 300 words) and/or 90-
minute panel sessions to the conference organiser
mailto:[log in to unmask] by 31 May 2008. Please include
your institutional details and email address. We aim to notify applicants
within three weeks of this deadline. It is envisaged that a selection of
papers will be published.
For more information please visit the project website:
www.nottingham.ac.uk/music/mma
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