CALL FOR PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS

OUR CALL FOR MUSIC, PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS HAS NOW CLOSED.

What happened?

What is happening?

What could happen?

…in Experimental, Electronic, and Improvised Music

Please submit a bio, abstract, idea, and/or complete paper by March 1, 2016 to:

papers2016@vusymposium.org

Length is up to you.  What do you have to say?  How long will it take you?  The format of our symposium is extremely flexible.  Take advantage of our flexibility to express ideas, concepts, or assertions in unconventional ways, if appropriate.

Students are encouraged to apply as well as professionals working on careers outside of academia.

Here are some potential paper/lecture topics, but feel free to propose your own:

  • Performance Practice
  • Compositional Process
  • Interpretation
  • Pedagogy – Teaching EEI music itself, or using EEI music as a teaching tool.  Does it work?  Does it not work?  How do younger students react to experimental music?
  • Graphic Notation
  • Improvisation and Game Theory
  • Alternate Intonation Systems
  • Entrepreneurship – music in general, popular and concert, is being painted into a corner, how can music at the fringes exist?
  • Musical Analysis – new tools are needed to examine music of Christian Wolff, for instance
  • Music Theory – What is next?  Who will write meta-meta-meta-hodos?  Can it be written, or has there been too much of a sea change in EEI music?  What theory is helpful with improvised music?
  • Aesthetics – Recently, a composer came through Utah and proclaimed “The only invalid reason to compose a piece is to try and create something new.”  What is a valid reason to compose?  What is an invalid one?  Are all free improvisations, which are by nature completely new, invalid?
  • Ethics
  • Technique – How do you rehearse improvisation?  Should you?  How do you rehearse Earle Brown?  Should you?
  • History
  • Social or Political Context
  • Open-ended Compositions – Launchpad for improvisation, or gateway into composition?
  • Performer/Composer – does this work?  Does this mean you perform exclusively your own music?  Can your music outlive you?  Does this matter any more?