Jours fixes (2015)

 

16. Dezember 2015 | Conservative Progressivism: Hasan Ferid Alnar, Vienna, and Symbolic Power in the Turkish Music Revolution
Referent: Erol Koymen (University of Texas in Austin)

This study examines the reciprocity of the musical relationship between the Turkish and Austrian nation-states during the first half of the twentieth century through an examination of interactions between Turkish Five composer Hasan Ferid Alnar and his Austrian teacher Joseph Marx. Through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s Practice Theory and its concepts of habitus, fields of cultural production, and symbolic capital, I argue that the force driving this relationship was the strategic acquisition of symbolic capital by both parties within the context of their respective fields of music culture and power. By analyzing letters, documents, and newspaper articles found in Turkish and Austrian archives, I contend that the conservative composer Joseph Marx sought to bolster his powerful position in inter-war Austria through his activities as musical advisor in Turkey. Alnar, under the influence of his earlier teacher Hüseyin Saadeddin Arel, sought to enhance his positionality in the revolutionary early Turkish Republic as a progressive composer of Western-style music while preserving a space for Turkish Art Music marked by Republican modernizers as backward and anti-revolutionary. From the perspective of disability theory, I locate a discourse of musical sickness and health in the Turkish Republican field of music’s division into vigorous, national Turkish Folk and sick, non-national Turkish Art Music by re-considering nationalist ideologue Ziya Gökalp’s role in the Turkish Music Revolution. Through musical analysis of Alnar’s Kanun Concerto and examination of its reception, I argue that Alnar’s association with Turkish Art Music caused him to be “musically disabled” in the context of the Turkish Folk/Art Music divide.
This study throws new light on the transnational role of music in negotiating power and identity in the Turkish and Austrian nation-states, and challenges the prevailing model of unidirectional flow of cultural capital from Europe to Turkey during the twentieth century. Examination of Alnar’s dual musical habitus complicates the conventional narrative used to describe the Turkish Five group of composers. Finally, re-considering the Turkish Folk/Art Music divide in the field of Turkish music-cultural production in terms of disability theory and challenging Ziya Gökalp’s supremacy as theoretician of the Turkish music revolution bring new understanding to the Turkish Music Revolution.
 

Mo, 23. November 2015 | "...die Professoren Damisch und Wobisch als verlässliche Auskunftspersonen der Judenfrage...":
Zur Geschichte der A.K.M. 1938–1945
Referent: Hartmut Krones

In den Tagen vom 11. bis 13. März 1938 ging in Österreich die Machtübernahme durch die deutschen Invasoren und ihre einheimischen nationalsozialistischen Helfer so reibungslos vor sich, dass bereits am 12. März der seit langem für den „Tag X“ ausgearbeitete Plan in Kraft treten konnte, sämtliche bedeutende Organisationen unter Kontrolle bzw. unter eine eigene, der NSDAP nahestehende Leitung zu bringen. Zu den Vereinigungen, die man besonders schnell in den Griff bekommen wollte, zählte auch die „A.K.M.“, die Gesellschaft der Autoren, Komponisten und Musikverleger. Ging es hier doch nicht nur um ideelle, sondern auch um ansehnliche materielle Werte, die in die Hand zu bekommen von Interesse war. Und so wurden sofort „kommissarische Leiter“ eingesetzt, die – trotz fallweiser Bemühungen und selbständige Entscheidungen – de facto dem Leiter der deutschen STAGMA unterstellt waren. Und im August 1938 wurde die A.K.M. dann „offiziell“ der STAGMA eingegliedert, die aber bereits vorher dafür Sorge getragen hatte, dass Zahlungen an Juden weitgehend eingestellt wurden. – Ein äußerst trauriges Kapitel ist jedoch auch die „Nachkriegs-Geschichte“: Angesichts der nur schleppend und in unzureichendem Ausmaß beschlossenen „Rückstellungsgesetze“ vergingen nach 1945 fast zwei Jahrzehnte, bis die emigrierten Mitglieder der „alten“ A.K.M. in den Genuss ihrer vorenthaltenen oder eingefrorenen Tantiemen kommen konnten.

21. Oktober 2015 | Johann Nepomuk Mälzels mechanischer Feldtrompeter
Referent: Helmut Kowar (Phonogrammarchiv der ÖAW/Musik und Kunst Privatuniversität der Stadt Wien)

19. Juni 2015 | Towards 'vita democratica': Urban Soundscapes and the Ruptures of Subjectivity
Referent: Srđan Atanasovski (Belgrade)

“Real democracy“, states Rancière in his paper delivered in 1986, “would presuppose that the demos be constituted as a subject present to itself across the whole surface of the social body”. I take this clue as an invitation to explore whether we can revitalize the concept of subject while conceptualizing the society on the plain of radical immanence. The field of my exploration is the urban soundscape of Belgrade. I start with two particular aspects of today’s Belgrade soundscape: the sonic religioscape and the sonic policescape. I study both the everyday situations (through methods of in-depth interviews, participant observation and focus groups) and I discuss particular events which have provoked ruptures of subjectivity: Belgrade 2014 Gay Pride and the October 2014 military parade. The Gay Pride, the first in Belgrade’s history which was held without rampant violence on the streets, turned into a sonic conflict between the crowd, the organisers (providing the official programme and even trying to silence the crowd), the state apparatus (which demonstrated its surveillance power with the helicopters flying over) and the Serbian Orthodox Church (which used the church bells to express its protest as the parade passed by). The military parade held just nineteenth days later, both to honour First and Second World War anniversaries and to mark the state visit of Russian president, again opened the question who has the right over the public (sonic) space, as citizens protested against and had to cope with a week-long rehearsals of the military aircrafts’ performance. In these examples I will analyze how subject as a ‘resilient body’ can exercise its agency in the sphere of the sonic politics and opens avenues of dissent and opposition. I particularly discuss the sonic “public-private” divide, which is one of the most fundamental borders which structure everyday urbanity, as well as one of the crucial conundrums of vita democratica.
 

19. Mai 2015 | Lohnt es sich, Vladimir Jankélévitch zu lesen?
Referent: Andreas Vejvar

29. April 2015 | Das imperiale Vermächtnis (imperial legacy) in der südosteuopäischen Oper
Referentin: Tatjana Marković (ÖAW/IATGM)

15. April 2015 | „Schenker Documents Online“ – Geschichte, Ziele und bisherige Ergebnisse eines internationalen Langzeitprojekts zum Wiener Musiktheoretiker Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935)
Referent: Marko Deisinger

27. Jänner 2015 | Vorstellung des von Tasos Zembylas (Institut für Musiksoziologie) initiierten Projekts zur Erforschung von Kompositionsprozessen "Tacit Knowing in der musikalisch-kompositorischen Arbeit"
Referent_innen: Annegret Huber, Andreas Holzer, Martin Niederauer, Rosa Reitsamer, Tasos Zembylas