Research seminars

The Research Seminar Series is a series of talks by leading researchers at this university and elsewhere. The series is aimed at postgraduate students and staff but undergraduates and external visitors are welcome at every talk.

Cellist performing and talking at a seminar
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Each session will include a presentation by an invited speaker followed by questions and discussion. For some events, materials may be shared ahead of time with links on this page. The sessions will be conducted in a hybrid format - either in-person or online.

The series is open to all staff and students of the University of Sheffield as well as external visitors. All staff and students will receive details of the upcoming research seminar including instructions on how to join the event either in-person or online. External visitors should email admin-pgrmusic@sheffield.ac.uk to request to participate either in-person or online. 

Research Seminars 2023-2024

Do we need a new theory to explain how music evokes emotions? A constructionist proposal

18/10/23; Speaker Julian Cespedes Guevara

The scientific study of the way music evokes emotions in listeners has flourished in recent decades, thanks to the development of theories such as the BRECVEMA framework. However, those theories have produced little empirical evidence to test their hypotheses, and they have important limitations: they neglect the symbolic dimension of music, they do not clarify how the mechanisms they propose interact with each other, and they provide few details about how listening contexts influence listeners' emotional experiences. The purpose of my presentation is to put forward an alternative theoretical approach that aims to overcome these limitations, based on contemporary constructivist theories on emotion. The theory I propose submits that when listening to music, perceptual processes are produced that induce changes in central affect and bodily sensations in listeners. At the same time, these perceptual processes cause people to recall conceptual information about their past experiences and about the cultural significance of music. On some occasions, listeners significantly associate changes in their core affect and bodily sensations with the conceptual information evoked by the music and with information about the current context, resulting in the emergence of varied emotional experiences with the music. During my talk, I will present some hypotheses derived from this novel theoretical model and will review recent empirical evidence that supports them.

Meaning and purpose through engagement with music: Why is this significant for older adults?

30/10/23 - 12pm-1pm; Speaker - Helen English

Ageing brings challenges, often including a shrinking world on physical, social and emotional fronts. As we negotiate a series of lost identities – as significant carer, valued worker, each with its associated social and cultural capital – we must create new identities, new purpose, and meaning. Creativity seems to be an important way to shift into new territories, claim lost ‘possible selves’ and start to build new worlds. Music is a powerful means to refurnish our worlds and develop new social circles. There are abundant examples of people who have done this highly successfully, harnessing untapped wells of creativity – Jewish composer Minna Keal (!909-1999) comes to mind. There are also unsung but inspiring stories in our communities of older and very old adults who have reinvented themselves and remain active in their communities, motivated by passion for music, the meaning and social networks it brings. Some of these stories are told, for example in studies focussed on Music for Life in the UK, and internationally on the New Horizons music movement. These stories are valuable, bringing insights into the motivations and meaning for members, often suggesting new directions and purpose. However, much of the literature and enquiry has not been focused on the importance of meaning-making, its link to purpose, and its significance for older adults. Victor Frankl famously argued that meaning-making and purpose are the two most significant and desired human endeavours. In this talk, I will explore what meaning-making might be – how is it described, perceived, expressed – and why is it especially important to older adults? I draw on James Kaufman’s theory of creativity, Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of liberation, DeNora’s dual concepts of removal and ‘refurnishment,’ and my own concept of world-building. I will examine the literature on music and meaning-making for older people from diverse backgrounds and interweave some of my findings from working with communities in urban and rural Australia. This talk is intended to provoke discussion and I welcome your thoughts and insights at the end. Keywords: older adults, music, meaning, Freire, musical identities

Lost, Hidden or Overlooked - Exploring the Intangible and Tangible History of Black British Music

13/11/23 - 12pm-1pm; Speaker - Mylaell Riley

Intangible heritage, as the name suggests, refers to those aspects of cultural heritage we can't physically touch but is all too real, especially if one feels it's being taken away. It can be that part of an individual or community's identity or culture passed down from generation to generation, time travelling as ritual dances, oral traditions, music, memories and more. In many ways, these knowledge systems are the channels and mediums through which intangible heritage is communicated. When there is little else to cling to, these invisible threads unite a community at home or abroad. These fibers give people a sense of belonging, collective identity and a soul. The history of Black British music reflects the resilience and creativity of Black musicians in Britain. It is also the voice and barometer of Black British communities' ongoing struggles for equality and justice. Understanding this history is central to appreciating the importance of Black British music as a tool for cultural expression and social change. However, while the idea of accessing this music's history may seem straightforward, it is complicated by the availability of data, expertise and the passing of time, not to mention the tangible evidence of this cultural contribution, the artefacts. Given its creative and cultural significance, why is a proper understanding of this heritage so fleeting to the average Brit, young musicians, our music industry professionals and the international fan base for British popular music? Drawing on my experiences of performing, producing, and researching the evolution of Black British music has revealed that a comprehensive understanding of this cultural heritage is also too often absent from the curriculum, compounding what I see as an essential knowledge gap that must be addressed. The history of Black music in Britain is being lost in real-time while the challenges to engaging with it increase. If we are to understand, preserve and transmit this legacy to future generations, fresh approaches to collecting, cataloguing and curating this history are a must.

Research Seminars 2022-2023 

8/6/23 - 12pm-1pm; John Carr Library; Speaker - Juan Loaiza

Teleological and other Peak Experiences in an afro-Brazilian musical tradition: a preliminary view and new opportunities for post-cognitivism and cross-cultural research.

In this presentation I discuss preliminary insights from an exploratory research in the northeast of Brazil. During February and March 2023 I interviewed 12 practitioners of Maracatu (an afro-Brazilian musical tradition) from Brazil and the UK, asking in broad terms about how they think their musical practice impacts their personal well-being. Participants recalled peak experiences across various timescales -e.g. as memories related to how they encountered Maracatu for the first time, and in recent carnival events in 2023. For this presentation I draw attention to a subclass of peak experiences that I call “teleological peak experiences”. Such experiences capture encounters with what is seen as a force that transcends one’s will. From an emic perspective, these experiences are continuous with the practice of Candomblé and other closely related afro-Brazilian religions. I argue that, although mainly overlooked in the literature, teleological peak experiences with music offer an opportunity to understand aspects of coordination dynamics at the group level. I discuss how approaches within the umbrella term of post-cognitivism (i.e. 4E cognition, ecological psychology, dynamical systems theory) are best positioned to fruitfully develop this line of inquiry.

24/4/23 - 12pm-1pm; John Carr Library; Speaker - Dr Shzr Ee Tan

Decolonisation in Asian/transnational contexts: new intersectionalities, intergenerational forgetfulness and wilful misunderstandings

This talk addresses current flashpoints around different/conflicting projections on decolonial music initiatives around the world, including conversational fronts (or battlefronts in some cases) in multiple, intersectional contexts beyond the proverbial/imagined 'West'. Is decolonisation a ‘trend’, or here to stay, or already an 'old issue' of the 2010s? Can we keep Beethoven and Berio alongside Balinese gamelan and B.B. King? (but of course, yes). How will it happen alongside Gen Z concerns about climate change, mental health and precarity? Is musical decolonisation an anglophone-centric debate? What does it mean for people in the Global South, and also in increasingly affluent East Asia, whose representatives engage with the ‘West’ often wanting to consume the ‘canon’? Where do transnational and transcultural conversations lie amidst personal and institutional reckonings of class/academic/musical privilege? And what has music or sound got to do with all of this?

Speaking first from my own positionality as a woman scholar-musician-educator of postcolonial Singaporean heritage (and Chinese privilege) working primarily in the UK, I pose questions rather suggest answers. I attempt to ground these provocations not just in lived experience, but also in considerations of musical agency and choice, and how one key lies in having meaningful conversations on working together to re-level different playing fields around the world in micro and macro ways."

Shzr Ee Tan is a Reader and ethnomusicologist (with a specialism in Sinophone and Southeast Asian worlds) at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is committed to decolonial work and EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) initiatives in music and the performing arts, with interests in how race discourses intersect problematically with class, gender and recent debates on posthuman digitalities and sustainabilities. Shzr Ee is also Vice Dean for EDI at the School of Performing and Digital Arts at Royal Holloway, where she has pushed forward campaigns including an ongoing Safe Space Discussion Series, and workshops on topics ranging from inter-ethnic solidarity to mental health and neurodiversity. She is committed to mainstreaming EDI considerations within broader and systemic workflows in music worlds at in HE. As a steering committee member of the national sector group EDIMS, she also serves in co-mentoring projects.

06/03/23 - 12pm-1pm; John Carr Library; Speaker - Esbjorn Wettermark

Ask a Friend: using peer interviews to understand outsider perspectives on music practice.

This seminar introduces Ask a Friend, a methodology from the Access Folk research project on participation and diversity in folk singing. Ask a Friend is a method for research interviews devised by Esbjorn Wettermark and Fay Hield. It is aimed at reaching people just outside or at the periphery of affinity groups by asking self proclaimed members of the group to do a short semistructured interview with a friend, relative or acquaintance who is not involved with the same interest. In this example, we wanted to know what people who are not involved with folk singing thought about folk singing, their general attitudes, and experiences of encountering this form of music making. The presentation will discuss the process of recruiting interviewers and setting up the Ask a Friend project, what kind and quality of data it produced, and the potential for developing and using the method in other areas.

Dr Esbjorn Wettermark is research associate on the Access Folk project in the music department where he is researching participation and diversity in folk singing in England. In addition to his research on the English folk scene, he has studied Vietnamese music and music theatre for many years. As a music manager and educator he has worked on areas such as rural/urban divides and cultural policy in Sweden as well as VR-technology in music education. He is an accomplished musician and has been awarded the Swedish title Riksspelman (National Folk Musician) for his performance of traditional music on the clarinet.

23/02/23 - 12pm-1pm; John Carr Library; Speaker - Roger Mantie

Do We Really Play Music?

Roger Mantie is Associate Professor, Department of Arts, Culture and Media at University of Toronto Scarborough, with a graduate appointment at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. He enjoyed previous appointments at Arizona State University and Boston University. He is the author of Music, Leisure, Education: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives (2021), co-author of Education, Music, and the Social Lives of Undergraduates: Collegiate A Cappella and the Pursuit of Happiness (2020), co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Technology and Music Education (2017) and the Oxford Handbook of Music Making and Leisure (2016), and is the Senior Editor of the International Journal of Community Music. Complete information at rogermantie.com

According to the ethologists — those who study animal behaviour — play is a natural, universal behaviour amongst several mammalian species. Friedrich Schiller went so far as to claim that people are only ‘complete’ when they play. In English, the word ‘play’ is almost ubiquitous in musical discourse. We play music. But do we really play when we play music? In this presentation, I engage with the literature on play to explore music performance in relation to such things as the field of play, the ludus-paidia relationship, the framing of play, and the means and ends of play in order to explore and problematize music learning and teaching practices.

30/09/22 - 12pm-1pm; Ensemble Room 1; Speaker - Sungji Hong

Listen to the recording of the talk

Sungji Hong will present the compositional process of her recent pieces: LUX MUNDI for oboe, violin, violoncello, and piano, BISBIGLIO for flute, clarinet, and piano, EXEVALEN for bass clarinet, and PRISMATIC for orchestra and piano.

Hong's music has been described as "a work of iridescent freshness" (BBC Music Magazine), "the sound is utterly luminous" (Fanfare Magazine), and "the harmonies and fluid dynamics were modern" (The New York Times). Her compositions include works for solo instruments, orchestra, chorus, ballet, and electroacoustic media with special interest on timbre and pre-determined pitch structures. In 2022 she has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2022, she has been elected as an Associate by the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM) upon its 200th anniversary. Hong has received commissions from the Fromm Music Foundation, the National Flute Association, Texas Flute Society, the MATA Festival, Lorelei Ensemble, iSing Silicon Valley, the Tongyeoung International Music Festival, Kumho Asiana Cultural Foundation, and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, among many others. Her Missa Lumen de Lumine on the ECM New Series (ECM 1929), performed by the vocal ensemble Trio Mediaeval, received critical acclaim and reached the top ten on the Billboard Classical Chart and iTunes classics. She has received 50 distinctions for her compositions, including the Kazimierz Serocki (1st Prize), the Franz Josef Reinl-Stiftung (1st Prize), the Jesus Villa-Rojo (1st Prize), the international competition for original ballet music at the ISCM World Music Days in Slovenia (1st Prize), the Temple Music Composition Prize, ACL Yoshiro Irino Memorial Prize, Ilshin Composition Prize, CFAMC scholarship and others. Hong holds degrees from the Hanyang University, the Royal Academy of Music, and the University of York in the United Kingdom and is an Assistant Professor of Music Composition at the University of North Texas.

28/10/22 - 12pm-1pm; John Carr Library; Speaker - Gareth Dylan Smith

Love and Loving at the Drum Kit: Meaning-Making as an Amateur Musician

Amateur musicians (not to be confused amateurish musicians) make music for the love of their art, craft, community and self (Kratus 2019; Mantie 2021; Pitts 2005; Smith 2022). In this talk, the presenter will discuss notions of love as they pertain to his practice as an expert and profoundly amateur rock drummer. With audio and video examples from his music making, and drawing on philosophical framings of love (Frankfurt 2004; Fromm 1956; hooks 2001; Lee & Smith 2022; Silverman 2020; Wolf 2009), the presenter will demonstrate how meaningfulness in music making at the drum kit can be rooted in love of drums, drumming, self and others. Calling also on Ingold’s (2021) work with correspondences and Boyce-Tillman’s (2011) framework of non-religious Spirituality, the presenter proposes that understanding music as fundamentally experiential can help scholars and practitioners understand their own and others’ musicking as vital to human flourishing.

Gareth Dylan Smith is Assistant Professor of Music at Boston University. His research interests include drum kit studies, popular music education, and sociology of music education. His first love is to play drums. Recent music releases include progressive smooth jazz tracks with The New Titans, the Sun Sessions EP with Stephen Wheel, and the Ignorant Populists EP with Build a Fort (Zack Moir). Gareth is the drummer for Black Light Bastards and a founding editor of the Journal of Popular Music Education. His publications include I Drum, Therefore I Am (2013), Sound Advice for Drummers (2021) and 2022’s Magical Nexus: A Philosophy of Playing Drum Kit.

17/11/22 - 1-2pm (GMT); Conference Room, ICOSS Building; Speaker - Dr Daniel Mateos-Moreno 

Why do you think and behave the way you do? Researching the beliefs, attitudes and motivations of teachers and learners in music education

The aim of the ongoing project Musihabitus (funded by the Spanish National Research Agency, ref. 118002RB-100, of which prof. Mateos-Moreno is the principal investigator) is to explore the lifeworlds of teachers and learners in music education by investigating their beliefs, attitudes and motivations. This research aims to be relevant in understanding how they think and behave, and the ways in which their thinking and behaviour can be influenced or modified. The project is developed in multiple contexts, including community music, conservatory, primary and secondary school; regards different countries, such as the UK, Sweden and Spain; and draws upon diverse methodological standpoints, including phenomenology, social constructionism, and realism. For this presentation, prof. Mateos-Moreno will first briefly introduce some research that has already been finalised in the framework of the project. Thereafter, the focus will be set at one of those pieces, for which a detailed account will be provided in relation to its theoretical framework, methods and findings. To this end, prof. Mateos-Moreno will refer to the Master-Apprentice tradition, the Suzuki method and Paul Harris’ Simultaneous learning. At the end of the presentation, a time for questions from the audience will be allowed. In addition, questions may also be proposed to the audience in order to foster further debate/reflection.

Prof. Mateos-Moreno was educated at institutions in various countries, including the University of Cambridge (UK) and Carnegie Mellon University (USA). Within a three-fold career as a composer, pedagogue and researcher, currently works as associate professor in music education at the University of Malaga (Spain). Past teaching/research positions include Reader in music education at the University of Karlstad (Ingesund College of Music, Sweden), Teaching Assistant in music composition at Carnegie-Mellon University (College of Fine Arts, USA) and music teacher in various conservatories and schools. Prof. Mateos-Moreno has also worked as expert for the European Commission (Brussels) for the assessment of projects submitted to the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency of the European Union. His research includes studies within the fields of music education, psychology of music, musicology and music therapy; by means of qualitative, quantitative and mixed-method methodologies. Outputs on varied topics have received dissemination through book chapters published by Routledge and articles published in journals such as Psychology of Music, International Journal of Music Education, Music Education Research and The Arts in Psychotherapy. As a composer, laureated as “one of Spain’s finest young composer” by North American music journal Soundboard (Richard Long), as the author of “very involving” music (Colin Clarke, Fanfare Magazine), and “as an author who knows how to say whatever he wants while touching the audience” by Spanish newspaper El Mundo (Tomás Marco). Compositions have been released internationally by Naxos and Nibius records and has been played in many countries and venues around the globe. He is a happy father of two children, a cat and a dog and enjoys teaching, researching, composing music and reading about physics and astronomy.

28/11/22 - 12pm-1pm; John Carr Library; Speaker - Steven Jan

Universal Acid in the Computer Chip: Music, Memetics and Metacreation

Universal Darwinism (UD) (Plotkin, 1995) holds that the ‘evolutionary algorithm’ (Dennett, 1995, pp. 50–52) operates across the interconnected realms of a ‘recursive ontology’ (Velardo, 2016) that binds together all that exists. Indeed, UD maintains that all phenomena in the universe are emergent properties of Darwinian processes of variation, replication and selection. If true, an evolutionary view of culture must take priority over more ‘creationist’ accounts that rely upon the mysterious intercession of inspiration and imagination and the supposed conscious agency of the composer (or programmer). Accepting the logic of UD it follows that computer-generated music (CGM) must in some senses be explainable by evolutionary precepts. The most widely accepted (and critiqued) theory of the operation of UD in culture, memetics, arguably has significant explanatory power for human-generated music (HGM). This paper explores how AIMC can be understood in its light, even when the outputs of generative systems seem far removed from the structural norms, aesthetic values and sound-worlds, of HGM.

Keywords: Evolution, Universal Darwinism (UD), memetics, human-generated music (HGM), computer-generated music (CGM).

Steven Jan is Reader in Music at the University of Huddersfield. His research interests lie in the fields of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century music, music theory and analysis, computer-aided musicology, and the application to music of theoretical and analytical perspectives drawn from evolutionary theory, particularly the ‘meme’ paradigm first expounded in Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. His The Memetics of Music: A Neo-Darwinian View of Musical Structure and Culture (2007) was the first book-length exposition of this subject. His forthcoming book, Music in Evolution and Evolution in Music (https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0301), further explores the biological and cultural-evolutionary roots of music. He has published articles in Music Analysis, the International Journal of Musicology, the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Computer Music Journal, Musicae Scientiae, Music Theory Online, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, the Journal of Music Research Online, Psychology of Music, Language and Cognition and Fron-tiers in Psychology. He is also Co-editor of the Journal of Creative Music Systems (http://jcms.org.uk/).

Research Seminars 2020-2021 

26/04/22 - "Group singing activities and mental health: An exploration of the pre-requisites and challenges of the facilitator's role"

The mental health benefits of group singing activities have increasingly featured in many research projects and in the media. However, the focus is generally on the benefits for the singers rather than upon the challenges of facilitating singing groups with an emphasis on mental wellbeing. In this context, the demands upon facilitators are wide-ranging, requiring a unique combination of musical and extra-musical skills and knowledge. Surprisingly, training for this complex role is limited, and group singing facilitators may not have access to some of the resources that would support them in their work. The aims of this research project were to identify the core skills required by group singing facilitators, to explore their needs for training or professional support, and to develop an accessible set of resources based on the research findings. The project began with a scoping review, which informed the design of two national online surveys for singers and group facilitators. The surveys were followed by an action research project involving singing facilitators who work with groups of singers with experience of living with mental health conditions. The practical outcome of the project was an online ‘toolkit’ of resources informed by the research evidence.

Speaker bio:

Dr Yoon Irons:
Yoon is a singer, musician, music therapist, and researcher. Her research focuses on developing and delivering singing programmes for people living with longer-term health conditions, such as cystic fibrosis, Parkinson’s, Aphasia, chronic pain, and spinal cord injuries. Yoon is a research fellow at University of Derby, where she conducts the staff orchestra.


Professor David Sheffield:
David's work aims to understand the impact of stress on health, wellbeing and performance. He uses a range of methodologies (e.g. epidemiological, experimental, psychophysiological, interviews). His current research interests include: Nature Connectedness; Music and well-being; Pain and Pain Management in Patients and Athletes; Compassion and mindfulness-based approaches to living; Inequalities and justice in healthcare; and Cardiovascular Responses to Stress.


Dr Michael Bonshor:
Michael has a background as a professional musician, conductor and teacher. He was a co-investigator on the University of Derby’s research project on singing, group facilitation and mental health, and is currently involved in an arts and health project in partnership with the NHS. Michael is Course Director for the University of Sheffield’s MA in Music Psychology in Education, Performance and Wellbeing.

03/22/22 - "Exploring Women’s Musical Leadership: Introducing WMLON, the Women’s Musical Leadership Online Network"

To this day, musical leadership remains one of the most male-dominated musical areas. As late as 2013, women conductors achieved a significant first when Marin Alsop became the first woman to conduct the BBC’s Last Night of the Proms. Indeed, musical leadership itself is often constructed as residing in male authority figures, quintessentially exemplified through the maestro conductor. This ‘maestro myth’ (as Norman Lebrecht characterised it, 1997) has been perpetuated since the mid-nineteenth century through the ‘maestro writing tradition’ of male conductors from Berlioz (1843) and Wagner (1869), through Stokowski (1944), Furtwängler (1953), and Boult (1963), to Boulez (2003). This presentation shifts the spotlight to considering women’s musical leadership and explores the impetuses behind the founding of the Women’s Musical Leadership Online Network (WMLON), by the authors in 2019, and also presents its initial findings. With the dual aim of both researching women’s musical leadership and acting as a support network for women musical leaders and potential leaders, WMLON interrogates the current context of women in musical leadership with a specific focus on three areas: women in the music industries, women in educational leadership, and women leading contemporary musical practices. WMLON was established following the first International Conference on Women in/and Musical Leadership, speaks in partnership with the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Women and Musical Leadership: The Nineteenth Century and Beyond, and will be further developed via an AHRC network grant between January 2022 and November 2023. WMLON is open to all.

Speaker Bio:

Laura Hamer is a Senior Lecturer in Music and Associate Director of Student Support (Arts and Humanities) at The Open University. Her research specialism lies in Women in Music. Her books include Female Composers, Conductors, Performers: Musiciennes of Interwar France, 1919-1939 (Routledge, 2018) and The Cambridge Companion to Women in Music since 1900 (Cambridge University Press, 2021). She is currently co-editing, with Helen Julia Minors, The Routledge Companion to Women's Musical Leadership: The Nineteenth Century and Beyond and PI of the AHRC-funded Women's Musical Leadership Online Network. Dr. Helen Julia Minors is School Head of Performing Arts and Associate Professor of Music at Kingston University London. She is founder and co-chair of EDI Music Studies Network. Recent publications include: Artistic Research in Performance Through Collaboration, edited with Martin Blain (Palgrave 2020) and Paul Dukas: Legacies of a French Musician, co-edited with Laura Watson (Routledge, 2019), as well as chapters in Opera and Translation (John Benjamins, 2020), and articles in Tibon (2021), London Review of Education (2019, 2017) and entries in the Cambridge Stravinsky Encyclopedia (2021). She is currently co-editing, with Laura Hamer, The Routledge Companion to Women's Musical Leadership: The Nineteenth Century and Beyond and is CI of the AHRC-funded Women's Musical Leadership Online Network with Laura Hamer.

21/02/22 -"Cashing In or Selling Out? Musings on a commercial art project"

Being highly paid to create art might be the goal for any composer, but it is an elite few who reap substantial financial rewards while retaining artistic control. Anecdotal evidence, supported by a 2015 Sound and Music survey, suggests that the majority of UK artists who define themselves as composers, actually earn a small percentage of their income, if anything at all, from their art. Commercial music is another matter: the primary difference being that success is measured in part by financial gain, and artistic quality is ultimately defined by the commissioner. This seminar is a report on a project that I undertook for an advertising agency on behalf of a large international company. I was invited to take part specifically because of my interests in esoteric sound and visual relationships and non-linear programming software, but had to find a way to create something that would appeal to a group who appreciate innovation only if it produces familiar results. I invited composer John Lely to join me in the process and will present a piece of interactive software that we designed to fulfil the commission. As someone who has limited experience of commercial composition, this work has led me to re-evaluate some youthful ideologies and question the nature of artistic satisfaction as well as the issue of dissemination of practice as research.

Speaker Bio:

Professor Dominic Murcott is a composer, percussionist, curator and educator based in London. Beginning as a self-taught musician he played drums and percussion with many influential bands and is the vibraphonist with art-pop outfit The High Llamas. Recording has been with Stereolab, Pavement and St Etienne to name a few. Changing direction he studied music formally and received a PhD in Composition from Goldsmiths College before being made Head of Composition at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Now in his 19th year in the post, the department is oversubscribed and renown for its innovative approach to composition training. An expert on the music of Conlon Nancarrow, he lectures, curates festivals and undertakes public speaking around the world. Recent compositions include The Harmonic Canon, a piece for US/Japanese percussionists arx duo featuring a computer designed custom-made 1⁄2 ton double bell. Premiered at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival it available in glorious vinyl on nonclassical and won a 2018 BASCA British Composer Award. An avid forager and consumer of interesting food, in May 2019 he presented a special event at the British Library on taste in food and music with legendary chef Heston Blumenthal.

22/10/21 -  "Answer, echoes, answer"

The right hand in the bell of a horn serves several functions. On a mundane level the hand assists in the instrument being in a position in which it can be played, but the soft flesh of the hand also aids the timbre of the instrument and the exact position of the hand is essential for fine tuning. With historical instruments and their associated techniques the right hand can have a greater or lesser importance. For some early works the instrument is played without the insertion of the hand into the bell and for others the musician manipulates their right hand in the bell in order to create notes (“hand technique”). The position of the hand (or even the absence of the hand) greatly affects the timbre. Another way of changing the timbre is to use a mute, however this requires the musician to break off from playing in order to insert the mute. Whilst composers normally accommodate this in the music (writing an adequate number of bars preceding and following the con sordino passage) a significant number of nineteenth-century compositions exist where no such allowances have been made. Some of these later ones can be “accommodated” as it is possible to almost create the affect of a mute on valved instruments by using the right hand in lieu of a mute but this option is not available to the earlier natural instruments. In this seminar I will illustrate the problems inherent in these works, suggest solutions based on ideas that many nineteenth century HIP practitioners are currently exploring concerning tempo flexibility and dislocation, and discuss how the solutions may themselves suggest further ideas about the tempo flexibility composer/performers had in mind.

Speaker Bio

Anneke Scott is a leading exponent of historical horn playing. Her work takes her throughout the globe and throughout the centuries of music with a repertoire incorporating music and instruments from the late seventeenth century through to the present day.Anneke is principal horn of a number of internationally renowned period instrument ensembles including Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the English Baroque Soloists, ensemble Pygmalion, The Orchestra of the Sixteen, the Irish Baroque Orchestra, and the Dunedin Consort and Players and many others. Anneke enjoys an international solo career and discography embracing three centuries of virtuosic horn works. Her expertise in baroque horn repertoire ensures that she is frequently to be heard performing the famous obligato arias of composers such as Bach and Handel as well as solo concertos from this period. Her critically acclaimed solo recordings also include three discs focussing on the music of the leading Parisian horn player of the nineteenth century; Jaques-François Gallay. Anneke enjoys collaborating with a wide group of musicians and is a key member of a number of chamber music ensembles including The Prince Regent's Band andBoxwood & Brass. She regularly works with leading period keyboardists including Steven Devine, Neal Peres da Costa, Geoffrey Govier and Kathryn Cok and period harpist Frances Kelly. She teaches at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, University of Birmingham. In 2018 she was awarded Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Music and in 2019 she was one of the recipients of the International Horn Society “Punto Award”.

More information on her work can be found at www.annekescott.com

05/11/21 - Inventing Korean Protestant Hymns in the Age of Empires, 1884-1930 

The dissemination of Christianity was banned in Korea until the late nineteenth century, but by the end of the twentieth century Protestant Christianity was the most popular religion in (South) Korea. Despite the tremendous impact of this religion on various domains in Korea, including music, it has eluded Anglophone music studies, given this discipline’s tendency to treat the Western world and the non-Western world as separate cultural spheres. This talk considers how we might tell the history of Korean Christian music as a site of circulation, transformation, and agency. It focuses on the first decades of Protestantism in Korea, when the North American missionaries had immense power over indigenous Christian communities. It explores the musical culture that formed in this milieu in terms of a range of Christian artefacts which were forged in the context of Korean socio-cultural heterogeneity and in the crucible of early twentieth-century trans-Pacific history, marked by the rise of the U.S. and Japan as regional powers.

Speaker Bio:

Hannah Hyun Kyong Chang is a Lecturer in Korean Studies at the University of Sheffield. She obtained her PhD in Musicology from UCLA, with a dissertation fellowship from the American Musicological Society (AMS). Subsequently, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University's Institute of Sacred Music and a visiting assistant professor at the Department of Music, New York University. She is currently working on a project called “Pacific Voicings: Korean Hymns and Prayers in the Age of Empire, 1884-1945” as a recipient of an AHRC Research, Development, and Engagement Fellowship. Her next project will examine modernist composers in Korea and Japan. She currently serves on the AMS Council and is a co-convenor of AMS's Global Music History Study Group.

19/11/21 - They have Ears to Hear and Hear Not: Early Depreciation of Black and Indigenous People of Color’s Music 1910-1920

In this talk I’ll present early results of a study concerned with sound recordings in early music appreciation, part of a larger ongoing grant by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council. In particular, I’ll present a tentative conception, that of music depreciation, or the deliberate classifying of music as lesser and of lower quality. This conception is evident in the early engagement by those working in music appreciation as they addressed the music of Black and Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC). I will reveal how a set of criteria for appreciating classical music was misapplied to BIPOC music, resulting in an active program of music depreciation in the most popular music teaching texts of that era. These materials, present primarily via sound recording and textbooks, reveal widespread practices of music depreciation, the labelling of BIPOC music as uncivilised, uncultured, primitive, and illiterate. Following Ewell’s (2020) call for intersectional analysis of music theory’s white racial frame, and using a theoretical framework drawn from sound studies, I will argue that a critical intersectional reengagement with the racist and classist origins of music appreciation can help make the case for setting new foundations for teaching about music, following similar calls to de-sacralise listening (Rinsema, 2018), to adopt a diasporic approach (Gustafson, 2020), or to work with multimedia approaches that rest on Black music theory (Thibeault, 2021) all in an effort to continue to decolonise and otherwise confront some of music education’s most problematic and least understood histories.

Speaker Bio:

Matthew D. Thibeault is Associate Professor of Culture and Creative Arts at the Education University of Hong Kong. His recent research draws on frameworks from sound studies to illuminate the enmeshment of sound recordings and music pedagogy across the 20th century. He maintains active engagement with participatory music through the ukulele, banjo, and Okinawan sanshin. Thibeault’s publications and other details can be found on his professional website: www.matthewthibeault.com

6/11/20 - Whose Ears? Cage, A King, and Humming - Dr Suk-jun Kim, The University of Aberdeen.

Suk-Jun Kim studied theology at Yonsei university, South Korea and Recording Engineering at OIART (Ontario Institute of Audio and Recording Technology). He earned a master’s degree in Music Technology in Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in composition at the University of Florida. Currently, Kim is senior lecturer in Electroacoustic Music and Sound Art at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland and Director of PG Research in the School of Language, Literature, Music, and Visual Culture. As a composer and sound artist, Kim has won several international composition awards and attracted commissions. Kim was a DAAD resident composer between 2009-2010. Kim has written two books - Hasla and Humming – and is now working on new project on sound studies, including one that examines key aspects that have established the audience in the 21st century.
 

We often hear composers and sound artists say “Listen!” with an apostrophe. But what else would it mean to listen, if it is not an act of lending our ears to something that is not our own? In this talk, Suk-Jun Kim focusses on three incidents in which we lend our ears for listening, which have been explored in his recent book, Humming: John Cage with his Lecture on Nothing, A King from Italo Calvino’s short story, A King Listens, and humming, a vocalic act closest to being mute, or silence.

20/11/20 - Modelling the perception of emotion and meaning in music using probability theory - Professor Renee Timmers, The University of Sheffield.

"Perception of emotion and meaning in music is to a large extent probabilistic rather  than deterministic. Certain properties of music may increase the likelihood that a  particular emotion is perceived over another or a particular imagery or association  is evoked. What emotion or imagery is perceived also depends on contextual factors such as the apriori probability of emotions, listeners’ sensitivities and biases, 
and the distinctives of the properties within the musical context. In this presentation,  I will explore the use of Bayes’ rule to model the perception of emotion and meaning, and to capture the influence of these contextually shaping factors.

Considering emotion perception, according to Bayes’ rule, the posterior probability of perceiving an emotion given a musical property M is equal to the likelihood of the  observation of the musical property if the hypothesis of that emotion was true, times  the prior probability of that emotion (in the context of competing emotions). To  develop this method, measures of prior probability of emotions are required as well 
as probability estimates of musical properties in emotional expressions. Analogously, the posterior probability of multimodal imagery given musical property M is equal to the likelihood of that musical property in the context of the hypothesised multimodal phenomenon, additionally taking into account the prior probability of the phenomenon and the frequency of occurrence of the musical property across multimodal phenomena. Finally, probability calculations can be used to examine relationships between emotion and meaning in music: what is the posterior probability of an emotion given a multimodal association or vice versa what is the probability of a given multimodal imagery given an emotion? 

Data from existing research articles are used to get a proof of concept of these applications of Bayes’ rule to model perception of emotion and meaning in music. Future directions for research are discussed as well as benefits and limitations of the adoption of a Bayesian approach to music cognition."

4/12/20 - The secret inner life of the piano: Cosmologies for piano and 3D electronics - Dr Aaron Einbond, City University London

Description

How does a listener know immediately when she or he walks into a room with a live grand piano instead of a recording? One reason is the complex interactions between the piano sound and the space that surrounds it. Artificial Intelligence (AI) research is ubiquitous, yet often ignores the spatial presence of the live instrument and performer. Yet research in the field of music perception points to the essential role of situated or embodied cognition our listening experience. My composition Cosmologies for piano and three-dimensional electronics seeks to place the embodied presence of the instrument and its performer at the centre, using machine learning of audio features to decipher the intricate interdependencies of timbre and space that bring an instrument to life. The results explode the space inside the piano out to the space of the concert hall, creating a virtual reality (VR) environment for the ears, and situating the listener inside the instrument to experience its secret inner life.

Speaker's bio:

Aaron Einbond’s work explores the intersection of instrumental music, field recording, sound installation, and interactive technology. He released portrait album Without Words with Ensemble Dal Niente on Carrier Records and Cities with Yarn/Wire and Matilde Meireles on multi.modal/NMC Recordings. His awards include a Giga-Hertz Förderpreis, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and artistic research residencies at IRCAM and ZKM. He teaches music composition, sound, and technology at City, University of London.

29/1/21 - On the Singing Hologram: Miku, Love and Labour - Professor Nick Prior, University of Edinburgh

The advent of the performing hologram opens up significant questionsaround the fate of “liveness” in the digital age, blurring if not collapsing distinctions between absence/presence, live/real, original/copy as well
as transforming well-worn ideas such as authenticity. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in Japan and the UK, this talk explores the case of virtual idol, Hatsune Miku, originally a marketing mascot for voice synthesis software but who now tours globally and is a representative agent of a new breed of virtual performers. As well as introducing the Miku media model – a relatively flat media ecology where fans are also Miku producers – the talk will offer some speculative thoughts on how a Miku performance “works” as an assemblage of love, labour and socio-technical affordances. Who or what is performing, how is liveness managed when the performer is pure code, and what does this tell us about relations between live music, participatory cultures and virtuality?

5/3/21 - 'Getting it right’. Classical music and class in England: Dr Anna Bull, University of Portsmouth 

In this talk, I draw on my recently published book, ‘Class, Control, and Classical Music’ (Oxford University Press, 2019), to discuss why, in the UK, classical music remains predominantly played by white middle-class people. I draw on data from an ethnographic study with young people playing in classical music ensembles in the south of England to explain how the inclusions and exclusions that are visible today were set up historically in the establishment of music education institutions in the late Victorian period. The link between class and classical music is also apparent in the social relations of classical music pedagogy, such as what I am calling a ‘pedagogy of correction’. These social relations are not, I argue, separate from the music itself, but are in part formed by the demands of classical music’s distinctive aesthetic, repertoire, and instruments. These demands create an aesthetic ideal of ‘getting it right’. This means that in order to change the demographic patterns of who plays classical music, the aesthetic itself will need to change.

Speakers Bio:

Dr Anna Bull is a Senior Lecturer in sociology at the University of Portsmouth. Her research interests include class and gender inequalities in classical music education; and staff sexual misconduct in higher education. Anna has published in leading sociology and music education journals and her monograph Class, Control, and Classical music, looking at the culture of classical music among young middle class classical musicians in the south of England, was published in 2019 by Oxford University Press, and in 2020 was joint winner of the Philip Abrams Memorial Prize from the British Sociological Association. Anna is also a director of The 1752 Group (https://1752group.com/), a research and campaigning organisation working to address staff sexual misconduct in higher education.

19/3/21 -  Transgressive Trad: Alternatives to Heteronormativity in Traditional Irish Song - Dr Lillis Ó Laoire 

Lillis Ó Laoire is Professor of Irish Language and Folklore at NUI Galway. He has published on the song traditions of Tory Island and with Sean Williams an award winning biography of Joe Heaney. He is a noted performer being awarde TG4 traditional singer of the year in 2020.

Sean-nós song is regarded by many as the hegemonic core of Irish Traditional Music (ITM). Central to sean-nós are themes of erotic love and loss. Irish Traditional Music is conventionally regarded as conservative in outlook, reinforcing heteronormative binary gender identities, thus creating a challenging environment for those identifying as LGBTQ+, who also enjoy performing or consuming traditional music. This paper will briefly outline the rationale of such a conservative outlook within a cultural nationalistic framework, before exploring some transgressive examples, showing that 'tradition' and 'heternormativity' are not necessarily synonymous. This aims to open a space for the recognition and validation of non-binary histories within ITM, and especially within the song tradition.

23/4/21 - The social impact of making music (SIMM) in Colombia: Meanings and practices in a postcolonial Latin American nation - Juan Sebastián Rojas E., PhD

Research and public discourse on the social impact of making music (recently, also called SIMM) have become more visible in the last ten years, accounting for a diversity of situations, in which music practices play an active role in processes of social transformation, at different levels. Juan Rojas will provide a perspective on the current landscape of SIMM activities in Colombia, as studied within the framework of the larger international research project, “Music for Social Impact: Practitioners’ work, context, and beliefs.” The project aims at comparing between the findings in four countries—Colombia, Belgium, Finland, and the UK—but the talk will revolve around the organizational, cultural, and political aspects that have shaped the Colombian SIMM field, with occasional comparisons, for context. In Colombia, SIMM activities seem to be notoriously divided between small grassroots organizations and large national level institutional programs, both focusing on the attention of vulnerable and marginalized populations, mostly people in conditions of poverty or victims of the armed conflict. This divide is a partial result of the implementation of neoliberal policies of cultural decentralization since the 1990s, which restricted regional budgets, while privileging national-level programs focused on Western classical musics. While this model caters for thousands of people, local SIMM activities, which include a wide range of culturally diverse musical practices, are mostly unattended in a nation that publicly praises its cultural diversity. Is this problematic? This presentation explores the Colombian case from a cross-cultural perspective, aiming at future understandings of the larger SIMM field.

Speakers Bio

Juan S. Rojas is a Colombian ethnomusicologist, musician, and anthropologist. He received his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at Indiana University Bloomington, in 2018, and is an experienced researcher and performer of diverse Afro-Diasporic musical expressions, specializing in traditional and popular Colombian musics. His dissertation, titled “Drums, Raps, and Song-Games: An Ethnography of Music and Peacebuilding in the Afro-Colombian Town of Libertad,” explores the potential contributions of local musics to processes of conflict transformation. He teaches ensemble courses and graduate seminars at University of El Bosque and University of Los Andes, in Colombia and is a member of the research team at Sonidos Enraizados Cultural Corporation. He currently holds a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the project “Music for Social Impact: Practitioners’ work, context, and beliefs,” hosted by Guildhall School of Music and Drama, as part of his work at the UNESCO Chair in Education, Arts, and a Culture of Peace, at Juan N. Corpas University Foundation (Colombia).

7/5/21 - Musical life in a mid-eighteenth-century prison - Dr Cheryll Duncan, RNCM

Lewis Granom’s Plain and easy instructions for playing on the German flute is significant in being the earliest work on the pedagogy of the instrument by a named English author. Legal records recently discovered in The National Archives reveal that the treatise had an extraordinary genesis, being largely the product of lessons given by Granom to its dedicatee, John Bourke, a wealthy Irish landowner who was incarcerated for debt in the King’s Bench Prison at the time. The litigation that followed the breakdown of their friendship sheds light on a range of matters, including the patron/composer relationship, their musical tastes and views regarding Handel’s posthumous reputation, the sources used to compile the Instructions, the cost of music lessons, copying and other related expenses, and the cultural and social life of one of London’s more salubrious gaols.

Speakers Bio

Cheryll Duncan is a Senior Lecturer in Music at the RNCM. Her research investigates professional music culture in Britain during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a particular focus on records of the equity and common-law courts. She has published several articles in leading musicological journals, and contributed a chapter to Geminiani Studies (ed. C. Hogwood). Her monograph on the violinist and composer Felice Giardini was published in 2020.

21/5/21 - Composing a Symphonist: Florence Price and the Hand of Black Women’s Fellowship - Samantha Edge, Lord Crewe Junior Research Fellow in Music, University of Oxford.

Florence Price (1887–1953) is often described as the first African American woman to achieve national and international success as a composer. However, this deserved accolade tends to exceptionalize her achievements as a female composer of African descent and thus to obscure or negate the rich context in which she worked. “Composing a Symphonist: Florence Price and the Hand of Black Women’s Fellowship” resituates Price in the dynamic cultural movement of the Black Chicago Renaissance and recognizes how a number of African American women played diverse and crucial roles within it. I illuminate Price’s Chicago, in which a female-led community shaped an American art music that uplifted black musical idioms. Positioning Price’s transition from Little Rock, Arkansas, against the backdrop of the Great Migration, the unfolding narrative explores the first six years in which she lived in Chicago (1927–1933); it delves into the community that awaited her and the particular influence of Nora Douglas Holt, Estella Conway Bonds, and Maude Roberts George in her ascent to become the first nationally-recognized black female symphonist. The result is a geographical and socio-cultural mapping of Price’s Chicago that reveals the clasped hand of black women’s fellowship.

Speakers Bio

Dr. Samantha Edge is the Lord Crewe Junior Research Fellow in Music at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. She is a leading interpreter and scholar of the African American composer Florence B. Price. She received the Society for American Music’s Eileen Southern Fellowship (2019) and a Newberry Library Short-Term Residential Fellowship (2019) for her work on women's contributions to concert life in interwar Chicago. She has written for American Music, Women and Music, and the Kapralova Society Journal. She released Four Women: Music for Solo Piano by Price, Kaprálová, Bilsland and Bonds with Wave Theory Records in 2018. Her latest album is called Fantasie Nègre: The Piano Music of Florence Price.

Join at: https://zoom.us/j/99483467755

28/5/21 - Three’s a crowd? Inviting Machine Learning into the collaborative space in a new work for contrabass clarinet, Ellen Sargen, Royal Northern College of Music.

This talk will focus on a recent collaboration between myself and Sarah Watts which used Machine Learning as a third collaborator in the creation of a new piece for contrabass clarinet and track. The aim of our research was to use Machine Learning as an objective observer of the idiosyncratic behaviours exhibited in either our performance or composition practices and to create a piece that documented these behaviours within it. We trained our chosen algorithm (PRiSM SampleRNN) on recordings of Sarah’s improvisations and of my compositions. This generated new audio samples, exhibiting behaviours that the algorithm had ‘learnt’ from our original data. These samples, representative of an artificial space between Sarah and I were used to create a new work: ‘You may own us but we are going to inform on you’. This piece aimed to give equal space to all collaborators. In this talk I will discuss the social and ethical concerns and benefits that arose from giving a non-human this position in the collaboration. 

Biography:

Ellen Sargen is an alumna of The University of Sheffield (BMus, MA) and is currently studying for a PhD in Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music, supported by the North West Consortium DTP. Ellen’s research aims to explore musicians’ relationships with their instruments, bodies and repertoire as they are performed in long-term collaborative spaces, before documenting these (with opportunity for development and transformation) in new works composed with her collaborators.

Ellen is an associate composer of University of York Music Press. Her music has been performed across the UK and abroad where she has worked with ensembles including Ligeti Quartet, Ensemble 360, Psappha, Ensemble Recherche, NoteBene etc. Recent commissions include those from National Opera Studio, Classical Sheffield Festival and Music in the Round (2018-2020). Ellen is also a flautist and directs the all-abilities ensemble CoMA Manchester.

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