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SUMMARY:From scientific instruments to musical instruments: the tuning for
 k\, metronome and siren - Myles W. Jackson (Polytechnic Institute of New Y
 ork University and the Gallatin School of NYU)
DTSTART:20100527T153000Z
DTEND:20100527T170000Z
UID:TALK24255@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:David Thompson
DESCRIPTION:My talk analyzes how nineteenth-century acoustical instruments
  meant to standardize musical performance and measure various dimensions o
 f sound\, such as pitch and beat\, were a century later put to use as musi
 cal instruments themselves. Metronomes (and their predecessors\, the chron
 ometer) and tuning forks migrated from bourgeois households and rehearsal 
 halls to physics and physiological laboratories and then back to concert h
 alls\, where they were the primary instruments of a number of twentieth-ce
 ntury compositions. Similarly\, sirens\, another instrument employed by ni
 neteenth-century acousticians for determining accurately musical pitch\, w
 ere heard with increasing frequency in the twentieth-century musical halls
  of New York\, Berlin\, and Paris. Drawing upon a material cultural histor
 y of science and technology\, this lecture will trace how these objects we
 re redefined by their new roles as the generators\, rather than the quanti
 fiers\, of musical qualities\, by exploring both the use of mechanical app
 aratus to standardize critical aspects of early nineteenth-century music a
 nd the resulting debates surrounding what such standardization meant to th
 e art. Did these machines hinder or enhance expression and creative genius
 ? Could they thwart the attempts of virtuosi to take liberties with the co
 mposer's original intentions? Twentieth-century composers\, such as Györg
 i Ligeti\, Edgard Varèse\, and Warren Burt\, used these same acoustical i
 nstruments to subvert the very notions they were created to define and rei
 nforce.
LOCATION:McCrum Lecture Theatre\, Bene't Street
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