Catherine Laws – författare

Samuel Beckett produced some of the most powerful writing – some of the funniest but most devastating – of the twentieth century. He described his plays, prose and poetry as ‘an unnecessary stain on the silence’, but the extraordinary combination of concision and richness in his writing stems from his peculiar sensitivity to the sounds and rhythms of words. Moreover, music forms a part of Beckett’s comic aesthetics of failure: it plays a role in his exploration of the possibilities and failures of the imagination, and the ever-failing attempt to forge a sense of self. No wonder, then, that so many composers have taken inspiration from Beckett, setting his words to music or translating into music the dramatic themes or contexts of his work.Headaches Among the Overtones considers both music in Beckett and Beckett’s significance in contemporary music. In doing so, it explores the relationship between words, music and meaning, examining how comparable philosophical concerns and artistic effects appear in literature and music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Performance in the fields of contemporary music, subjectivity and identityMusic reflects subjectivity and identity: that idea is now deeply ingrained in both musicology and popular media commentary. The study of music across cultures and practices often addresses the enactment of subjectivity “in” music – how music expresses or represents “an” individual or “a” group. However, a sense of selfhood is also formed and continually reformed through musical practices, not least performance. How does this take place? How might the work of practitioners reveal aspects of this process? In what sense is subjectivity performed in and through musical practices? This book explores these questions in relation to a range of artistic research involving contemporary music, drawing on perspectives from performance studies, phenomenology, embodied cognition, and theories of gendered and cultural identity.Contributors: Steve Benford (University of Nottingham), Richard Craig (freelance performer and researcher), David Gorton (Royal Academy of Music, London), Christopher Greenhalgh (University of Nottingham), Adrian Hazzard (University of Nottingham), Juliana Hodkinson (Grieg Academy, University of Bergen), Maria Kallionpää (Aalborg University), Zubin Kanga (Royal Holloway, University of London), Catherine Laws (University of York/Orpheus Institute), Jin Hyung Lim (Keimyung University), Thanh Thủy Nguyễn (Malmö Academy of Music, Lund University/Vietnam National Academy of Music), Stefan Östersjö (Piteå School of Music, Luleå University of Technology/Orpheus Institute), Deniz Peters (University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz), Eleanor Roberts (University of Roehampton), Anne Veinberg (Orpheus Institute)This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

The process of practising is intrinsic to musical creativity. Practising may primarily be thought of as technical, but it is often also musically meaningful, including elements of interpretation, improvisation, and/or composition. The practice room can be a space in which to explore a field of creative possibilities; a place to experiment and to refine ideas. To date, the literature on practice has been primarily pedagogical and psychological. Little attention is paid to the significance of practice, and especially to the role of embodied experience - of understanding gained through doing - in the forming of musical ideas. The Practice of Practising is primarily concerned with considering practising as a practice in itself: a collection of processes that determines musical creativity and significance. The volume comprises four diverse case studies, in relation to music by J. S. Bach, Elliott Carter, Alfred Schnittke, and Morton Feldman, presenting both solo and ensemble perspectives.