Report by Ruairidh Pattie
The 60th Annual Conference of the Royal Musical Association, celebrating the association’s 150th anniversary took place on 11-13 September 2024, hosted by Royal Holloway University of London at Senate House and the British Library. Over the three days of the conference, a plethora of presentations (both in-person and virtual) lecture-recitals, poster presentations, and two keynote lectures (covering aspects of musical life from late antiquity to the present day) offered an engaging and exciting insight into the diversity of musical scholarship being undertaken throughout the UK and beyond. Given the anniversary theme of this year’s conference, the variety of scholarship presented attested to the fact that after 150 years, the RMA’s founding aim ‘for the investigation and discussion of subjects connected with the art and science of music’ continues to be served by the current cohort of scholars.
The first day of the conference included informative and lively sessions on a variety of topics, ranging from music in the Germanic and French canons to considerations of Motown and Chinese-European connections. A particular theme from this day arose in the two sessions addressing musicology and the climate crisis, examining how the activities of our discipline might engage with and highlight issues on a global scale. The day concluded with a keynote lecture by Catherine Bradley (University of Cambridge), the 2023 recipient of the Dent Medal, titled ‘Primitive’ Polyphony: Perspectives from the Musicological Periphery’. In particular, Prof Bradley discussed the technique of Stimmtausch, or strict voice-exchanging, as an example of contrary-motion polyphony with traces of this practice evident in source materials dating from before 1100. Through her engagingly delivered presentation, Prof Bradley questioned the way in which this style had been treated by later scribes, and the implications the political agendas of later scribes may have had for their compiling of monumental collections of medieval polyphony.
The second day of the conference once again brought together an exceptionally wide range of music scholarship presented through a variety of mediums. In particular, issues of global musicology, (de-)colonisation, and questions of operating within international networks ran throughout the sessions presented on this day.
The second of the keynote lectures kickstarted the activities of the third day. It was given by Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker and author of several volumes on diverse musical topics. In his address, Mr Ross detailed, in extremely entertaining and informative style, the history of music criticism before tracing its decline through the last half century. He in part diagnosed this problem as a result of the public sphere’s decline, which, in some respects, led the critic’s role to fall into obsolescence, at least in the view of many newspaper editors. Mr Ross then laid down a challenge to those within the academy to take up the mantle of the music critic and to continue to engage with live music in a journalistic sense, as well as scholarly, while questioning scholars’ obligation to assume the role currently filled by critics. This provoked a lively discussion on Mr Ross’ suggestions, with some delegates questioning whether this might simply add to the strain on the already overcrowded academic diary.
The British Library played host to the final day of the conference, which saw panels on archive studies and collection building, opera and voice, early music and manuscripts, contemporary music, and a celebration of the RMA in context, amongst others. The conference concluded with a celebratory drinks reception, at which a fanfare for the RMA by Dr Scott Mclaughlin (University of Leeds) was premiered and RMA President Prof Simon Keefe (University of Sheffield) gave a short address, thanking those who had worked hard to organise the conference, the various representatives of sister societies who had attended, and recognised all past presidents of the association. Prof Keefe also announced the launch of the RMA’s 150th Anniversary Fellowship Fund, which will be open to postdoctoral applicants in all music sub-disciplines who do not hold full-time academic posts in Higher Education. He also promoted Dr Leanne Langley’s comprehensive work on the history of the RMA. This new volume The Royal Musical Association: Creating Scholars, Advancing Research will be published by Boydell & Brewer in December 2024. It charts the slow acceptance of music into the British universities, from the early beginnings of the Association in the 1870s, to the activities of the RMA today, engaging with the changing approaches to musicology across the 150-year span of the society.
Outside of the sessions, this conference was filled with a great sense of collegial comradery, with lively discussions of various topics continued both during the breaks in proceedings and late into the evenings. A common theme of these discussions was the value of events such as the RMA conference in bringing large swathes of musicological thought together and allowing scholars to engage with disparate parts of the discipline while also fostering an important sense of togetherness and collaboration.
A final word must go to the excellently decorated cupcakes, made specially for the 150th anniversary reception. These were a source of much enjoyment and shall be remembered for many years to come.
Ruairidh Pattie is in the final stages of his PhD at the University of Glasgow, supervised by Eva Moreda Rodriguez. His doctoral research focuses on the performing life of Clara Schumann, particularly her concerts in Leipzig, Vienna, and London. More broadly his research addresses issues of music and gender in the 19th century, especially in Germany and the United Kingdom, as well as issues of canon formation and the history of pianistic performance. Ruairidh’s master’s thesis, completed at the University of Huddersfield, supervised by Thomas Schmidt, also centred on the work of Clara Schumann, this time examining the influence of Chopin and the brilliant school on the composition of her Op. 5. Ruairidh has published his research in the University of Glasgow faculty of arts postgraduate journal, eSharp. He has also presented various aspects of his work at conferences throughout the United Kingdom and abroad, including ‘Women at the piano 1840-1970’ (UC Irvine), ‘Women’s Work in Music’ (Bangor University), the ‘Institute for Austrian and German Music Research’ annual conference (Durham University), and the Royal Musical Association (Royal Holloway, University of London).