About this Event
The organising committee of the RMA Music and Philosophy Study Group warmly invites you to this book launch and panel discussion. This event is part of our ‘Conversations’ series, which opens spaces to collaboratively and constructively explore ideas across a range of musics and philosophies. All 'Conversations' sessions are free and open to all.
This session begins with brief presentations related to the panel title from invited speakers. This will be followed by open discussion between panel and audience.
In a variation on the usual 'Conversations' format, this session is a hybrid event taking place on both Zoom and in-person.
In person address: Lecture Theatre 1, School of Music, University of Leeds.
Zoom: Registration is required. Optional donations to the Study Group are invited on registration. On registering, you will receive an email with joining instructions for the Zoom session.
The featured speakers for this session are:
- Dr Katherine Hambridge (Durham University)
- Dr Tomás McAuley (University College Dublin)
- Dr Matthew Pritchard (University of Leeds)
This session is chaired by Prof. James Garratt (University of Manchester).
Panel information:
How should we view Romanticism’s contribution to the aesthetics of music, and its legacy to modern musical culture? Answers to this question have long begun by assessing the significance of Romantic instrumental music, particularly Beethoven – in continuity with this repertoire’s place in today’s concert halls. Abandoning an older idea of Beethoven as ‘the man who freed music’, music historians are now more likely to talk of the ‘iron rule of Romanticism’ (Richard Taruskin) and its ideological promotion of the ‘mysteries of an elite art’ (Stephen Rumph), reflecting a more critical view of the classical music culture that began to solidify c.1800 and continues up to the present. This panel discussion attempts to go beyond such interpretations by considering Romantic music aesthetics in a broader frame of reference. Romantic critics embraced opera, incidental music, melodrama, song and church music as well as symphonies. Far from being uniformly elitist in outlook, they considered ‘the people’ as an active force in aesthetics – whether from a left- or right-wing political perspective – and their poetic language frequently concealed a deep engagement with contemporary philosophy, its bold re-evaluations of religion and myth, and its theorisation of knowledge, emotions and rhythm in relation to music.
Event Venue
Online
GBP 0.00
