By Benjamin Davis (PhD Musicology) The object I have chosen is Fredric Jameson’s book Marxism and Form (1971), in which he postulates that history, as absent cause, shapes cultural forms and leaves traces in them of the situations of their making and reception. Read more
By Harriett Blakeman, MA (Performance) Directed by Mark Herman, Brassed Off (1996) confronts social and political tensions prevalent in late twentieth-century Britain. Herman portrays a colliery brass band threatened by pit closures and under investigation from the British Coal Board. For the band members, the ensemble is one of the many areas of their lives Read more
By Poumpak Charuprakorn (PhD in Composition) My composition ‘Never-ending Torture’ for soprano and harp was composed for the event ‘Coma notes: music and poetry exploring consciousness and coma’, Read more
By Jeffrey P Charest, PhD student For Object #7, PhD student Jeffrey Charest discusses the cifteli and the buzuk, which he presented at the Postgraduate Forum. “At the Postgrad Forum I talked about two Albanian plucked string instruments, the çifteli and the buzuk. The former, played mostly in northern Albania, has two strings while the buzuk, Read more
By Alessandra Palidda (PhD) My PhD project focuses on the relationship between music, society and politics in the city of Milan between 1790 and 1802. I have chosen this particular timeframe because, following the outcome of the so-called Napoleonic wars, Northern Italy went through a particularly complex political season, its government repeatedly changing within just Read more
By Jerry Zhuo, MA in Composition. When discussing Chinese contemporary music, one may recall the debate around ‘Chineseness’ that arose with the formation of modern China in the early 20th Century. Read more
By Justin Turnbull, MA (Music Studies). I find that listening to music in the background whilst undertaking another task can either focus my mind on the task or distract me from it. When writing an essay last semester I chose to listen to music strongly associated with my childhood, which had the effect of keeping Read more
