The years 2010-2011 are anniversary years for the composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). This conference offers the opportunity to take stock of Mahler’s pre-eminent position in the cultural landscapes of the 20th and 21st centuries. While his legacy for the development of music over the last 100 years has been well documented, the influences, traditions and compositional practices from earlier periods that acted upon Mahler and shaped his music have been neglected.
This conference addresses that imbalance in its principal themes:
- Mahler and historicism, archaicism, classicism, early romanticism or ‘anti-modernism’
- The conditions of Mahler’s contemporary, 21st-century exposure and reception (in scholarship, popular culture or performance)
- Nostalgia, both as cultural trope of homesickness or yearning for the past and as latter-day commercial industry
There will be a composer discussion forum featuring Anthony Payne, Edward Gregson, David Matthews, Stephen Goss, Tom Armstrong and Emily Howard.
The conference also presents a concert at Hatchlands, Clandon, using a piano once owned by Mahler, as well as performances by Uri Caine, The Endymion Ensemble and the Tetra Guitar Quartet, all comprising works by Mahler or adaptations of his music.
An exhibition of Mahler-inspired paintings by Caroline Tate will be held in the Lewis Elton Gallery during the conference, and this will be accompanied by a specially commissioned sound installation by Matthew Sansom, 'spirit redux', a multichannel generative composition derived from moments of stasis in Mahler's symphonies.
ORGANISER
Dr Jeremy Barham, Department of Music and Sound Recording, University of Surrey
SPEAKERS
Professor Julian Johnson (Royal Holloway, London) - Keynote address
Professor Zoltan Roman (Canada)
Professor Stephen Hefling (USA)
Professor Inna Barsova (Moscow)
Professor Peter Revers (Austria)
Professor Vera Micznik (Canada)
Professor James Buhler (USA).
AVAILABLE PRESENTATIONS
Morten Solvik (PDF 1.6 MB), ‘“What Love Tells Me”: Art and Eros in Mahler’s World’
Matthieu Schneider (PDF 1.3 MB), ‘Pedester ist der usikstoff, sublim der Vortrag’: Mahler’s Scherzos as Impulses for the Evolution of Musical Language’
Timothy Freeze (PDF 786 KB), ‘The Topicality of Nostalgia: Multiplicity of Reference in the Posthorn Solos of Mahler’s Third’
Alessandro Cecchi (PDF 16.9 MB), ‘Mahler, Contemporary of Bruckner: Bruckner’s Ninth and Mahler’s First Symphony’
SPONSORS
The conference is generously supported by the British Academy, the Institute of Advanced Studies (University of Surrey), the Royal Musical Association, the Institute of Musical Research (University of London), the Music & Letters Trust, and the Austrian Cultural Forum (London).
POST-EVENT PUBLICATIONS
Rethinking Mahler
Editor: Jeremy Barham
Oxford University Press, September 2017
