EDUQAS A Level Music Conference

‘Never confuse analysis with mere description’, Hans Keller used waggishly to say, chastising unfortunate speakers at conferences. To Keller, most so-called ‘criticism’ and ‘analysis’ was an amalgam of the descriptive and metaphorical: ‘The descriptive is senseless, the metaphorical usually nonsense.’ Most analytical writings boiled down to ‘mere tautological descriptions.’ V. Kofi Agawu has taken one analyst to task for failing to observe ‘the distinction between descriptions and analysis between critical, necessarily impressionistic commentary and a rigorous interpretative exercise…’

None of this was happening yesterday in the Scott Music Centre at Queen Anne’s. 88 delegates attended the one day conference with a focus on Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 and the concept of absolute and programme music in the mid / late nineteenth century. David Coggins gave two excellent papers in the morning focusing on the following themes:

• Conventions and deviations in opening movements of the classical symphony – Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, including a detailed examination of Haydn’s Symphony No. 104, movement 1.
• Anticipation, connections, tangents: Haydn’s Symphony No. 104, movement 2.

In the afternoon, Dr Christopher Tarrant (Lecturer in Music – Newcastle University) gave a superb account of the importance of absolute music and the growth of the narrative in nineteenth century composition, referring to the music of Beethoven, Berlioz, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Borodin, Sibelius and Nielson.

Christopher, then concluded by giving an overview of the undergraduate music courses at Newcastle University.

The conference was a great success. Arrangements and planning are in place for next year’s conference!