The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 26.239 Monday, 25 May 2015
From: Michelle Assay <
Date: May 24, 2015 at 10:22:12 AM EDT
Subject: Call for Panel Presenters: ‘Shakespeare and Nordic Music’ as a part of ‘Shakespeare and Scandinavia’ Conference
Call for Panel Presenters: ‘Shakespeare and Nordic Music’, (deadline for abstracts 1 July, 2015)
International Conference 'Shakespeare and Scandinavia', Kingston University, 8-11 October, Kingston-upon-Thames
http://blogs.kingston.ac.uk/ssku/calls-for-panel-presenters-deadline-for-abstracts-1-july-2015/
From the songs of Christoph Ernst Friedrich Weyse and Peter Arnold Heise to Finnish folk-rock group Apulanta (‘Today Shakespeare was born and died’) Shakespeare has figured in many branches of Nordic music without ever gaining the kind of prominence that major operatic settings accorded him in other European cultural centres. Probably the most significant contribution is Sibelius’s score for The Tempest (1925-26) consisting of more than an hour of some of his finest music. But lesser-known contributions by Sibelius’s compatriot Aulis Sallinen (King Lear opera, 2000), his Danish contemporary Carl Nielsen (incidental music for Shakespeare celebrations, 1916), Norwegian Arne Nordheim (a Tempest ballet in 1979, incidental music to King Lear in 1985, various vocal/ensemble settings with electronic background), and even Grieg (‘Watchman’s Song’ from Macbeth, c. 1867) begin to suggest a more significant picture than has been passed down to us.
Papers are invited on any aspect of Shakespeare and Nordic Music, covering all genres, styles and historical periods, and techniques of reworking, not excluding musical responses less concrete than text-settings or tone poems directly on Shakespearean themes. Questions of national temperament may also be addressed: is it mere essentialism to propose, for instance, that Nordic artists are instinctively drawn to those dramas that stress elemental natural forces and emotional bleakness – as the examples cited above would seem to indicate – rather than to, say, Shakespeare’s ‘Southern’ subjects?
Panel conveners: Michelle Assay (Universities of Sheffield and Paris Sorbonne) and David Fanning (University of Manchester)
Please forward abstracts of no more than 500 words, and a brief bio (2-3 sentences), to
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Michelle Assay
Université Paris Sorbonne, University of Sheffield