Description
In common parlance space can be both characterless and characterful. It can refer to areas or volumes that appear to lack form and history; the sense of space that is figuratively and experientially empty, a counterpoint to well-loved and much-discussed places. Yet space can also refer to those settings (whether open or closed, large or small) that are rich with meaning and feeling; the sense of space that corresponds to the dimensions of lived experience. In this paper I aim to think about musical space in both senses, considering the ways in which these two kinds of space may be mutually constitutive. My starting point is a provisional inventory of musical objects in circulation around nineteenth-century theatres. Much research of late has foregrounded the mobility of musical practices and the connectedness of various sites of theatrical production. This raises fundamental questions about who/what moved and how: we know that all manner of professionals (singers, conductors, musicians, machinists, set-painters, dancing-masters, et al) travelled between performing hubs; we also know that many objects (orchestral parts, play-texts, scenery, maquettes, choreographic notation, etc.) travelled with people or sometimes ahead/instead of them. To these lists we might add the circulation of ideas and critical commentaries that helped to shape the local reception of imported spectacle. After taking stock of the various portable properties of the nineteenth-century musical stage, the second part of my paper asks what all their unsung itineraries added up to. Drawing on work by Piekut (2014), Vella (2022), and Mathew (2022) that considers the place of networks in music studies I explore the significance of theatrical performance not only for well-connected nodes (i.e., the theatres we might mark on a map of the operatic world) but also the spaces in between that seemed both characterless and characterful in light of emerging cultural geographies of metropolitan modernity.| Period | 4 Nov 2023 |
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| Event title | Spaces of Musical Production, Production of Musical Space |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Milan, ItalyShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |