A Study Day on Jonathan Harvey's new opera Wagner Dream.
Presented by the Institute of Musical Research in association with the Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre, Universityof Sussex
Jonathan Harvey's new opera Wagner Dream opened at the Grand Theatre Luxembourg on April 28 2007, with further performances by the Netherlands Opera in June. Formerly Professor of Music at the University of Sussex, Harvey is one of Britain's most respected composers, noted for his interest in spirituality, and for the use of electronics in his music. Wagner Dream is his third opera, and it has a libretto by Jean-Claude Carrière, scriptwriter for Buňuel's last five films and for Peter Brook's Mahabharata. The events of the opera take place on the day of Wagner’s death in Venice, and deal with Wagner’s late interest in Buddhism and eastern philosophy.
Programme
Friday 1 June 2007, Senate House, London University, Malet Street, London WC1 Room N336
9.30 Registration
10 Nicholas Till (Director, Centre for Research in Opera andMusic Theatre,Sussex): Introduction & viewing of video extracts
10.45 Arnold Whittall (Kings College, London): '21st-century opera, 21st-century Wagner'
11.30 Coffee
12 Michael Clarke (Huddersfield): ‘Technology and the Spiritual in Jonathan Harvey’s Music’
12.45 Michael Downes (Cambridge): ‘Wagner Dream and the Idea of the East’
1.30 Lunch Break
2.45 Klaus Bertisch (Dramaturg for Wagner Dream, Netherlands Opera): ‘Bringing Wagner Dream to the Stage’
3.30 Jonathan Harvey in discussion with Julian Johnson (Oxford)
4.30 Tea
5 Close
WAGNER DREAM STUDY DAY - SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Jonathan Harvey was born in 1939. He gained doctorates from Glasgow and Cambridge, and on the advice of Benjamin Britten studied with Erwin Stein and Hans Keller. Since the early 1980s, on the invitation of Pierre Boulez, he has worked regularly at IRCAM, where he has realized seven major works, including the tape piece Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco, Bhakti for ensemble and electronics (1982). Harvey has also written orchestral, chamber and choral works, including two previous operas: Passion and Resurrection (1981), and Inquest of Love (1993), commissioned by the English National Opera. Wagner Dream was commissioned by the Netherlands Opera in association with the Grand Theatre of Luxembourg, The Holland Festival and IRCAM. Jonathan Harvey’s Ernest Bloch Lectures for the University of California were published as In Quest of Spirit: The Musical Thought of Jonathan Harvey (University of California Press, 1999), and a selection of his writings on music was published as Music and Inspiration, edited by Michael Downes (Faber & Faber, 1999). Between 1977 and 1993 he was Professor of Music at theUniversity ofSussex, where he continues to be Honorary Professor. Between1995-2000 he was Professor of Music atStanfordUniversity. He is currently Composer-in-Association with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
Klaus Bertisch is Dramaturg for the Netherlands Opera, where he has worked on a range of productions of both standard opera repertory and new works, including Michel van der Aa’s multi-media opera After Life. He is also a director.
Michael Clarke is Professor of Music and Director of the Electroacoustic Music Studio at the University of Huddersfield. As a composer his works (which include both acoustic and electroacoustic pieces, most often combining these media) have received many performances and broadcasts throughout the world. Clarke also writes about various topics related to his work, including contributions to The Csound Book (ed. Richard Boulanger, MIT Press). An interactive aural analysis of Jonathan Harvey's Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco, combining written text with specially devised software, was published in Analytical Methods of Electroacoustic Music, edited by Mary Simoni (Taylor and Frances, 2005).
Michael Downes studied English and Music at King's College Cambridge before completing a doctorate on the music and ideas of Debussy at the University of Sussex. He subsequently lectured in music at the University of Sussex, the Open University, Canterbury Christ Church University, and on the Opera Studies programme at Rose Bruford College, while also working as a conductor and cellist. Since October 2006 he has been Music Director at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He edited the selection of Jonathan Harvey’s writings on music entitled Music and Inspiration (Faber & Faber,1999), and is currently working on a book about the music of Jonathan Harvey, which will be published by Ashgate in 2008.
Julian Johnson is Reader in the Faculty of Music at the University of Oxford. He undertook his doctoral study at the University of Sussex, and he has written widely on Mahler, Webern and the Second Viennese School, and on music aesthetics and the sociology of music. He is also a composer whose music has been performed in Europe and the USA. In 2005 he was awarded the Dent Medal of the Royal Musical Association for 'outstanding contributions to musicology’. His writings on the music of Jonathan Harvey include “Precarious Rapture: The Recent Music of Jonathan Harvey” in Peter O’Hagan (ed.), British Music of the 1990s (Ashgate, 2001). From Autumn 2007 he will be Professor of Music atRoyalHollowayCollege.
Arnold Whittall is Professor Emeritus of Music Theory and Analysis at King's College, London. He has written extensively on twentieth-century and contemporary music, including Musical Composition in the Twentieth Century (OUP, 2000) and The Cambridge Introduction to Serialism, scheduled for publication in 2008. During 2007 he has been introducing modern-music programmes at the Wigmore Hall and Queen Elizabeth Hall and lecturing in the United States and Canada. He is the author of a study of Harvey’s music entitled Jonathan Harvey (Faber & Faber,1999).
Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre