Call for Papers – Harvard Graduate Music Forum Conference 2015

Call for Proposals

This interdisciplinary conference takes as its premise that music is inseparable from the economic conditions of its production and consumption. Through presentations, lecture-recitals and composers’ colloquia, we seek to explore the intersections of music and economics from a diverse array of perspectives including labor, practice, material culture, and capital.

Questions include but are not limited to:

How do musicians and their employers understand musical labor, and how does this impinge on issues of amateurism, professionalism, and institutionalization?
How have shifting economic systems — for instance, from patronage to mass consumption, or from liberalism to neoliberalism — altered the place of music in society?
How have issues such as postcolonialism, the North-South economic divide, and globalization, intersected with various musical practices to forge divergent models of economies of music?
Where does music succeed and where does it fail in transforming economic relations?
What are the economic consequences of the material means of musics’ dissemination, such as manuscripts, published scores, phonograph recordings, streaming and live performance?
How do questions of cultural and economic capital combine in appraisals and contestations of musical value?
How has music symbolically represented economics and status? What is music’s role in this endeavour today?

Submissions

We welcome submissions from current graduate students on these and related topics. We seek proposals on all repertoires, musical practices and historical periods, and representing a broad set of methodologies. Formats for presentation include:

20-minute papers, audiovisual presentations, or exploratory text works, with 10 minutes for discussion
Please submit abstracts of a maximum of 350 words and, where appropriate, up to 4 additional pages for figures. Please add a short statement regarding AV requirements.
30-minute composer colloquia, performances, or lecture-recitals, with 15 minutes for discussion
Please submit details of the work to be presented in a maximum of 350 words and, where appropriate, links to relevant sound recordings and/or scores or supplementary documentation.

Deadline for proposals: 5 December 2014

Please e-mail submissions to: harvardgmf2015@gmail.com

Posted by

Diana Christine Hereld

Posted on

May 3, 2012

Posted under

Music, Music Theory

Comments

Vocal warm-up produces acoustic change in singers’ vibrato rate

“Now Andrea, do you know why we’re going through this specific exercise?”

“Is it because you hate me?”

Although this smal event personifies one of my favorite students simply expressing a bit of good-natured sarcasm, I cannot tell you how difficult it can be sometimes to get communicate to my young students the importance of warming up the voice. In regards to the following study: I knew it! Now if I could just get my kidss to believe me…

Moorcroft L, Kenny DT

Australian Centre for Applied Research in Music Performance, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Vibrato rate and vibrato extent were acoustically assessed in 12 classically trained female singers before and after 25 minutes of vocal warm-up exercises. Vocal warm-up produced three notable changes in vibrato rate: (1) more regularity in the cyclic undulations comprising the vibrato rate of a note, (2) more stability in mean vibrato rates from one sustained note to the next, and (3) a moderating of excessively fast and excessively slow mean vibrato rates. No significant change was found for vibrato extent. The findings indicate that vocal warm-up may regulate vibrato rate. Thus tone quality, which is strongly linked to vibrato characteristics, may undergo positive change as a result of vocal warm-up.

And for my Italian friends…

La frequenza e l’estensione del vibrato sono state studiate in 12 cantanti femmine con istruzione musicale classica, prima e dopo 25 minuti di riscaldamento vocale. Il riscaldamento vocale produceva tre risultati: 1) una maggiore regolarità nelle ondulazioni cicliche che comprendevano la frequenza del vibrato di una nota; 2) una maggiore stabilità nella media del vibrato nel passaggio da una nota sostenuta alla successiva; 3) una moderazione delle frequenze di vibrato troppo alte o basse. Nessuna variazione è stata rilevata per quanto riguarda l’estensione del vibrato. Questi risultati suggeriscono che il riscaldamento vocale può regolare la frequenza del vibrato. Di conseguenza, la qualità del suono, che è fortemente associata alle caratteristiche del vibrato, può risentire positivamente degli esercizi di riscaldamento.