The lecture will take place in TANNA SCHULICH HALL, followed by a catered reception in the lobby of the Elizabeth Wirth Music Building. This event is free and open to the general public.
Registration
No registration is required for this event.
**CIRMMT Students wishing to have their attendance tracked for awards eligibility, please make sure to scan the QR code available at the entrance of Tanna Schulich Hall.
Abstract
Like many other citizens, musicians more and more question their life choices in light of current knowledge about human-caused changes of climate, biodiversity, etc. When I edited an issue of Circuit entitled "Composing in the Anthropocene" (vol. 32, no. 2, 2022), I asked composers whether their concerns about this ecological crisis did translate into their creative work, and some of them felt it difficult, or uneasy, to connect those two areas. In parallel, I started to investigate this as an aesthetic problem: can (new) music ’sound’ ecological? Which specific compositional techniques emerge from the work of ecologically-minded musicians? In this talk I’d like to share some of the questions, obstacles, and amazements that have been arising over the course of this ongoing research.
Biography
Nicolas Donin is Professor and Chair of musicology at the University of Geneva. He has published extensively on the history of music and musicology since the late nineteenth century, with a focus on contemporary composition and performance.