Home » Past Conferences » 2014 – Dissonant Discourses? Finding Harmonies in Music and German Studies
2014 – Dissonant Discourses? Finding Harmonies in Music and German Studies
FEBRUARY 20-22, 2014 | SARRATT STUDENT CENTER 216/220
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee
Featuring a Performance by Members of the Nashville Symphony
Keynote Speaker: Holly Watkins, Eastman School of Music
From minnesang to Mahler and beyond, the musical tradition of the German-speaking world has been remarkable not only for its aesthetic quality, but also because of the unusual degree to which musical works have been caught up in political, literary, and philosophical discourses. These convergences go well beyond such outright considerations of music in writing and philosophy as E.T.A. Hoffmann’s review of Beethoven’s 5th or Adorno’s dismissal of jazz. Examples of deeper and more subtle connections between music and language are found in everything from the complex use of alliteration in the Hildebrandslied to Thomas Mann’s use of sonata form in Tonio Kröger. Music crosses boundaries, whether these are the spatial boundaries muddled by Turkish-German rappers or the temporal boundaries sprung by heavy metal bands interpreting Walther’s courtly lyrics. Music can make the circular nature of such crossings apparent, as when a visitor to Magdeburg’s line-dancing club “The Nashville Saloon” hears an American country music singer break into a yodel. An interdisciplinary approach to music and German studies can offer new metaphors and pathways of thought for contemporary discussions of literature, history, politics, media, culture, and, of course, music itself.
Download the program as a pdf Dissonant Discourses Program
Program for Dissonant Discourses?
Thursday, February 20 | Sarratt Cinema |
7:30 pm | Screening: Wagner & Me (McGrady, 2010) |
Presented by Lutz Koepnick (German & Film Studies) | |
Friday, February 21 | Sarratt|Rand Center, Room 216 | 220 |
2:00 pm | Registration |
2:15 pm | Welcome Meike Werner (Chair, Department of Germanic & Slavic Languages) |
Opening Remarks Andrea Weatherman (President, GGSA) | |
2:30 pm | Music, Language, and Artistic Identity Moderator: Jessica Riviere | Respondent: Julian Ledford |
Alexis VanZalen, Eastman School of Music The Self-Fashioning of a Consummate Musical Orator: Dieterich Buxtehude in Seventeenth-Century Lübeck |
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Alexis B. Smith, University of Oregon A Chord of Leibniz’s Pre-Established Harmony in Novalis’ Die Lehrlinge zu Sais |
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3:45 pm | Break |
4:00 pm | Musical Criticism: Wagner, Schumann & Friends Moderator: Alejandro Arango | Respondent: Johannes Endres |
Oren Vinogradov, UNC Chapel Hill The Contesting of Faust: Composer Networks and the Status of Program Music in 1850’s Germany |
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Jan Buerger, Vanderbilt/Marbach Hans Henny Jahnn and Dieterich Buxtehude |
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5:15 pm | Break |
5:30 pm | Keynote: Toward a Posthumanist Organicism Holly Watkins, Eastman School of Music |
7:15 pm | Dinner: Blackstone Restaurant & Brewery |
Saturday, February 22 | Sarratt|Rand Center, Room 216 | 220 |
9:00 am | Breakfast |
9:30 am | Ohne Musik wäre das Leben ein Irrthum Moderator: Leslie Reed | Respondent: Rebecca Panter |
Scott Gleason, Fordham University A Flock of Vogelfrei Songs |
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Garrett L. Johnson, Arizona State University Dramatizing Nietzsche and Wagner: Wolfgang Rihm’s Opera Dionysos |
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Robert Mottram, University of Oregon The Music of Forgetting: The Witness in Nietzsche and Mahler |
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11:00 am | Break |
11:30 am | Visual Musicality: Sonic Embodiments of Modernity Moderator: Maria Bjorkman | Respondent: Barbara Hahn |
Ethan Blass, University of Chicago Rilke’s Sonette an Orpheus: auf der “unendlichen Spur” von Musik |
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Emily Dreyfus, University of Chicago “Spielt da nicht wer?” Musical Reverberations in Arthur Schnitzler’s Fräulein Else (1924) |
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Mark J. Phillips, Michigan State University “I receive; therefore I am”: Radiophonic Subjectivity in Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz |
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1:00 pm | Lunch |
2:00 pm | Musical Identity in Fragmented Contexts Moderator: Alexandra Campana | Respondent: Ingo Kieslich |
Sarah Elaine Neill, Duke University Genre and Reception in Schoenberg’s Op. 15, No. 15 |
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Kristina Marie Eckelhoff, University of Arkansas Romanticism and Resistance: Expressions of Nationalism and Modernism in the Lieder of Hans Pfitzner and Viktor Ullmann |
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James Archer, University of Durham, UK Adorno, Eisler, and the Lyric Challenge to ‘Non-Identity’ |
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4:00 pm | Benton Chapel |
Performance & Discussion with a Chamber Group from the Nashville Symphony | |
7:00 pm | Closing Reception at the Home of Barbara Hahn Directions will be announced. |
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