News and Updates:

The Search Yearbook will will be published in the winter of 2010 by The Edwin Mellen Press. The Yearbook will feature articles appearing in Search since 2008 as well as new articles written for the volume.

The University of Victoria School of Music is Now Accepting Applications for B.Mus. and M.Mus. and PhD Degrees in Music Composition.

Scholarships, Fellowships and Teaching Assistantships are available to qualified candidates. Applications for graduate study should be made by January 15 of the year in which the student wishes to register. Later applications will be considered if space is available. The deadline for fellowship consideration is February 15.

The composition area of the School of Music has a long reputation for experimentation and innovation, attracting students from across Canada and internationally. The faculty consists of accomplished composers, involved in both creation and research, whose works are performed at major festivals and concert venues throughout the world. Our students have received awards and tenure-track teaching positions at home and abroad.

The Graduate Program includes private and seminar instruction in composition, and courses in musicology and theory. Opportunities are available to work in the School’s computer music studios and to take part in solo and ensemble performance. Candidates for the degree are required to complete several extensive original compositions. These works are normally performed during graduate study.

Faculty

Dániel Péter Biró, Associate Professor for Composition and Music Theory
Christopher Butterfield, Associate Professor for Composition, Chair
John Celona, Professor for Composition
Kirk McNally, Computer Music, Audio Specialist, Recording Engineer
Gordon Mumma, Adjunct Faculty
Andrew Schloss, Professor for Composition and Computer Music

Website:
http://finearts.uvic.ca/music/programs_graduate/composition/

Call for Papers

American Innovators Series, 2009
Wright State Department of Music, March 13-14, 2010

Ben Johnston and the American Just Microtonal Tradition
Tuning Practices since 1750

Saturday, March 13
Master Class on Just Intonation by John Schneider

Colloquium #1: Ben Johnston and the American Just Microtonal Tradition

Colloquium #2: Tuning Practices since 1750,  in Honor of Owen Jorgensen

Sunday, March 14
Lecture/Demonstration of Historical Keyboard Tunings,
Prof. Charles Larkowski

Concert of Music by Partch, Johnston, and Other Microtonalists
 featuring guitarist John Schneider and Wright State University faculty and students
3 p.m.

The colloquium on Ben Johnston and the American Just Microtonal Tradition seeks a  wide range of approaches to the music of Ben Johnston and composers closely associated with him.  Analyses of specific works, broader discussions of Johnston's career and output, papers focusing on issues of performance practice, and historical/philosophical discussions of the American just microtonal tradition are all welcome areas of focus.
A second colloquium, Tuning Practices since 1750 will be held in honor of Owen Jorgensen. Questions concerning tuning practices before 1750 have been carefully explored over the last generation of scholarship, but tuning practices between about 1750 and the advent of recordings have received little serious scholarly attention. This gap is all the more puzzling, in that the core repertory of the Classical concert tradition was created in this period. Owen Jorgensen's two major works on historical piano tunings are core contributions to research into tuning practices prior to 1900, but after some two decades his research has still not been adequately discussed in the academic literature. 
This colloquium will welcome a wide variety of approaches. Possible topics include:
– the comprehensiveness and reliability of existing research, including Jorgensen's
– tuning practices in different instrument families, performance traditions, and geographical regions
– patterns and tendencies of historical change in tuning practices
– ramifications of recent research into historical tunings for performance practice, analysis, cognition, and aesthetics
– new avenues of research
Presenters are welcome to take part in both events, but are not required to do so. All conference participants are invited as guests to the Sunday afternoon concert and presentations by John Schneider and Prof. Larkowski.
Papers presented at the Colloquia should in general last no longer than 30 minutes, followed by a 10-minute question/discussion session. When submitting the paper or abstract, please indicate what media will be used in the presentation (CD, projector, etc.).  All submissions should include full contact information for the author and indicate the author's academic position, if applicable. The deadline for submission of paper or abstract is Feb. 10, 2010.
Some or all papers from the colloquia will be published in the "American Innovators" book series.
Submissions can be sent electronically to franklincox@yahoo.com or mailed to:

Dr. Franklin Cox
Department of Music, Wright State University
3640 Col. Glenn Highway  Dayton, OH 45424-0001
(937) 767-1165

Extended Descriptions of Colloquia

Colloquium #1: Ben Johnston and the American Just Microtonal Tradition March 13, 12-5 p.m.

Ben Johnston is widely recognized as one of the most significant composers in the American just microtonal tradition.  After studying and performing with the founder of this tradition, Harry Partch, Johnston dramatically expanded the potentials of Partch's just intonation system. Many American composers employing just intonation have focused on the beauty of just intonation, using lower-limit intervals and a limited group of notes, and have tended to adopt highly conservative aesthetic justifications for their work. In contrast, Johnston has throughout his career focused on the innovative potentials of just intonation: he has developed a sophisticated harmonic system allowing for an infinite number of notes and range of modulations, he has explored higher-limit and often highly dissonant intervals, and he has created a complex and original rhythmic language. This musical language has been developed not to exemplify mathematical relations, but rather for expressive ends, by a composer pondering issues of significance to himself and, he feels, to his society.
Until now, most research on Johnston has focused on explications of his tuning system, and relatively little in-depth analytical work has been done on his music. This colloquium in particular welcomes analyses of Johnston's music, discussions concerning Johnston's aesthetic goals and the degree of his success in realizing them, investigations of the relationship of Johnston's system to historical theoretical models (such as Riemann's O- and U-tonality), speculative papers concerning potentials for further development of just microtonality, and broader discussions of the goals and achievements of composers in this tradition. In addition, Johnston's notational approach opens interesting avenues for specifying variations in tuning that historical performance manuals have discussed, but for which no notation previously existed.  Papers exploring the potential for performing older repertoire with the notational resources Johnston has developed are welcome.

Colloquium #2: Tuning Practices since 1750,
in Honor of Owen Jorgensen
 March 13, 6-10 p.m.

One of the mid-20th century's seemingly most self-evident truisms concerning tuning was that equal temperament represented a high point of musical progress, a solution simultaneously rational, practical, and aesthetically pleasing after centuries' worth of dissatisfaction with earlier temperaments.   This is a core assumption in J. Murray Barbour's seminal history of tuning practices, is central to the argument in important essays by the great musicologist Edward Lowinsky, and was an article of faith for the project of Modernist composers such as Stravinsky and Schoenberg.
Barbour, among others, assumed that performers since the Renaissance have commonly used equal temperament. One mark of the influence of such views is the fact that one still finds in introductory textbooks the claim that Bach's Well-tempered Clavier was actually intended for equal temperament, representing a milestone in the centuries-long struggle to overcome the imperfections of earlier tuning systems. These assumptions are still strong in our current culture: instrument design is still focused on removing deviations from equal temperament, professional musicians widely regard accurate performance in equal temperament as a mark of professionality, and  generations of new-music performers have been trained to regard  the assimilation of equal temperament as a sort of moral imperative,
Over the last generation, some aspects of what one could call the "Equal-Tempered Project" have begun to dissolve. Both the large volume of research on Medieval through Baroque tuning practices and the wealth of outstanding historically informed performances and recordings of this music have demonstrated the unreliability of equal-tempered biases,  at least as regards the pre-Classical repertoire.  In contrast to the situation in the mid-20th century, very few Baroque experts now would claim that performing Bach with equal temperament indicates a progressive, morally correct, or historically informed approach. 
This sort of questioning of equal-tempered assumptions has, however, not yet been widely applied to Classical and Romantic music. The vast majority of performers consider the choice of equal temperament for this music to be self-evident, and few who question this premise have solid historical grounds for their choice.  As one example, when expressive intonation is discussed, performers almost without exception assume the heightened leading tones advocated by Casals, whereas the mid-eighteenth century consensus overwhelmingly favored wide leading tones (diatonic semitones) and small augmented unisons (chromatic semitones), precisely the reverse of the current "expressive intonation" consensus.
Owen Jorgensen's two major works on historical piano tunings, Tuning the Historical Temperaments by Ear  and Tuning, are core contributions to this debate, but after some two decades have still not been adequately discussed in the academic literature. Advocates such as Ross Duffin have treated his research as authoritative and ratified Jorgensen's assertion that true equal temperament was on a practical level not possible before the 20th century. Numerous musicologists and expert piano tuners, however, have questioned the reliability of Jorgensen's research and conclusions. What is missing is a thorough scholarly exploration of the issues Jorgensen has raised.   If Jorgensen's research is reliable regarding the historical tunings of the piano, the central instrument of the 19th century, then there are important implications for both understanding and performing the music of this century.  Perhaps the claims of Schumann and other composers to be able to identify specific key colors were not simply illusions, as has often been claimed.   Perhaps the equal-tempered tuning currently used to perform Classical and Romantic music is not historically accurate.  Most importantly, perhaps crucial expressive values in this music have been weakened or eliminated through the use of equal temperament (as has been demonstrated, for example with regard to the French clavecinistes of the Baroque period),
The Colloquium on Tuning Practices since 1750 will explore these and related issues.  Possible topics include:
– the comprehensiveness and reliability of existing research, including Jorgensen's
– tuning practices in different instrument families, performance traditions, and geographical regions, including instrument design, historical performance manuals,  and traditions of harmonic practice.
– patterns and tendencies of historical change in tuning practices, both prior to recordings and  during the era of recordings.
– ramifications of recent research into historical tunings for performance practice, analysis, cognition, and aesthetics
– new avenues of research