Study Group for Russian and Eastern European Music (REEM)
Background: In the last twenty years or so, scholarly interest in Russian music has undergone a renaissance in the UK. There are now around ten music departments where either Russian or East European music (or both) is offered as a staff specialism, with the result that there has been a rapid expansion of postgraduate interest. There are also growing links between musicologists and Slavists working in Russian departments, and between British-based scholars and Russians. The idea for a BASEES Study Group for Russian and East European Music (REEM) has been raised by several scholars from different institutions in the last year, and it seems that, with this recent upsurge of interest, the formation of this Group is timely, even overdue. The group is affiliated to the University of Oxford Music Faculty.
Purpose: The Study Group will seek to foster collaborative research and exchange of ideas within this growing community. By extending the research profile of the Study Group to include East European music, we will gain from the expertise of several well-established British academics with excellent connections with Polish, Hungarian and Czech scholars. We also hope to develop contacts with colleagues in Russia and Eastern Europe, wherever possible enabling scholars to travel to the UK. There is no musicological forum that would facilitate this as an ongoing project, and all such exchanges are currently made on an ad hoc basis. BASEES offers a unique opportunity to organise this in a more structured way, and should therefore create much closer links between scholarly communities here and abroad.
The Study Group has a number of key aims:
- To foster research links between scholars working in music and Russian departments in the UK. To this end, the convenors feel it important that the organization of the Study Group’s activities is the product of collaboration between Slavists and musicologists;
- To provide a forum for academics and postgraduates to exchange ideas and meet one another at regular conferences, with the possibility of resulting publications;
- To explore the many connections between Russian and East European musicological issues and develop contacts between scholars working in these areas;
- To support and encourage postgraduate research into Russian and East European Music;
- To bring musicologists into the wider community of BASEES, something which should greatly benefit both Slavists interested in musical issues, and musicologists who need a less narrowly 'musical' forum to discuss broader cultural and aesthetic issues;
- To establish and maintain an email list, in order to inform members of the Study Group about forthcoming events of interest;
- To raise the presence of REEM at meetings of the Royal Musical Association.
The inaugural conference, EASTERN EUROPEAN MUSICAL RELATIONS, took place in the Department of Music, University of Bristol, on Saturday 24 June 2006. The 2006 programme can be downloaded here.
THE ROYAL MUSICAL ASSOCIATION and BASEES RUSSIAN AND EAST EUROPEAN MUSIC STUDY GROUP held a POSTGRADUATE STUDY DAY on Russian and East European Music at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama on 10 February 2007
REEM held a conference on MUSIC IN RUSSIA AND EASTERN EUROPE AFTER ‘THE THAW’ at the Department of Music, Victoria Rooms, University of Bristol, on Friday 29 June 2007. The programme can be seen here.
In 2008 REEM held a conference on RUSSIA'S MUSICAL REVOLUTIONARIES, in association with the Oxford University Faculty of Music and the Bate Collection, which took place at the Denis Arnold Hall in Oxford on 1 October and was organised by Rosamund Bartlett and Pauline Fairclough. The programme can be seen here.
Musical Nationalism and Modernism in Russia and Eastern Europe. Oxford University Faculty of Music (Denis Arnold Hall) on Saturday 17 October 2009
Although nationalism and modernism have been loosely described as successive movements in musical history – the former linked to the concepts of tradition and national identity, the latter associated with cosmopolitanism and the ideal of progress – their relationship has been much more compound than chronological perspective suggests. Some of the issues this conference wishes to examine are:
1) how musical nationalism and modernism have acted or have been perceived (by composers, critics and political authorities) as contrasting or complementary approaches in Russia and other East European countries
2) the interaction of nationalism and modernism in musical creation
3) the modernist underpinnings of some manifestations of musical nationalism
4) the impact of nationalism on certain expressions of musical modernism
Convenors: Katerina Levidou and Rosamund Bartlett.
Abstracts of no more than 400 words should be sent to REEM SG by 31 May
Convenors:
Rosamund Bartlett and Katerina Levidou.