Bangor University Words/Music researchers involved in two events in central London

Lecturer in French Dr Helen Abbott and Honorary Research Fellow in French pianist Sholto Kynoch co-presented a session on their ongoing research collaboration looking at the performance of French song recently. Their presentation was part of a research event at the Institute of Music Research, University of London called ‘Inside Song Performance: Mapping the interior of the performative act’. Helen and Sholto also performed songs by Villiers and Charpentier during their presentation.

For more information: http://www.songart.co.uk/insidesongperformance.html

Following on from this event, on Friday 20 May 2011, Helen Abbott  will be co-presenting another event on French song, together with Dr Roy Howat, Dr Emily Kilpatrick and vocal students at the Royal Academy of Music. They  will be exploring Gabriel Fauré’s three Baudelaire song settings of 1870–71 together with Chabrier’s and Duparc’s 1870 settings of ‘L’invitation au voyage’. The session examines these settings relative to the new edition in progress of Fauré’s songs (a project funded by the AHRC and led by Dr Roy Howat), examining the composers’ responses to Baudelaire’s complex poetry and the challenges the songs pose for the performer and the editor.

For more information: http://www.ram.ac.uk/events?event_id=669 and http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/News/Press/Pages/Baudelaireandthemélodie.aspx

Both events arise from Dr Helen Abbott’s research leave. This work is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Publication date: 19 May 2011