Singing a Song in a Foreign Land
- Submitting institution
-
Royal College of Music
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 25
- Type
- H - Website content
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2021
- URL
-
https://www.rcm.ac.uk/singingasong/
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- Yes
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Based on the ‘mobility paradigm’ (Sheller and Urry, 2005) and building on recent research in musicology and wider humanities (Adey 2010, Greenblatt 2010, Grosch/Gratzer 2018), the methodology underpinning this online resource aims to test a new approach to representing the music of migrants by foregrounding their experiences in, and contributions to their host society. The resource is focused on migrants from Nazi Europe who settled in Britain in the 1930s. Their music has previously primarily been associated with victimhood, persecution and exile (e.g., Decca’s ‘Entartete Musik’ Series, Musica Reanimata, Berlin and ExilArte Centre, Vienna), an approach that both distorts and fails to account for many of its qualities. Following an international conference at the RCM in 2014 which established connections with families and colleagues of migrant musicians, a series of interviews following Oral History Society principles was filmed to contextualise the research. The musical legacy of Peter Gellhorn (1912–2004) was chosen for an AHRC-funded pilot project in 2016. Performance editions were prepared from manuscripts at the British Library and the music was explored in workshops, performed, and recorded in the studio. The output materials have already been viewed over 80,000 times and led to publications and performances in Britain, the US, France, Austria and Germany. The project demonstrated how a methodology that combines oral testimony, historical and artistic research applied in context-based rehearsal and performance, can create significant new knowledge. This methodology has informed further projects exploring music composed during the internment of ‘enemy aliens’ on the Isle of Man in 1940, and the recently discovered musical war-time diary of Robert Kahn (1865-1951), consisting of 1160 piano miniatures. Feedback from audiences and participants helped further refine the approach, which has become the basis for the current ‘Music, Migration and Mobility’ project, funded with an AHRC large grant (ca.£900K).
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -