[Anthropgrad] Work-in-Progress Seminar - 27 February - Kate Bowan & Paul Pickering

[Sharon Komidar]

The Research School of Humanities presents,
 Work-in-Progress Seminar Series 

1- 2.30 pm, Friday 27th February, Theatrette, Old Canberra House

MUSIC FOR THE pEOPLE: AURALITY AND RADICAL POLITICS IN
NINETEENTH-CENTuRY BRITAIN

Dr Kate Bowan & Professor Paul Pickering,

Research School of Humanities, ANU.

 

Songs and singing, and music making more generally, are a neglected
aspect of the social culture of popular politics. The public rituals of
the Chartists who campaigned for democratic reform in the 1840s, for
example, almost invariably involved music as well as speech; the ranks
of the movement were filled with musicians. The music they made, in its
many and varied forms, has not received full attention. Many of the
political musings that have been treated as poetry by scholars were, in
fact, lyrics for songs with identifiable melodies which drew on a rich
aural tradition in popular culture. This paper forms part of a larger
joint project examining the music - lyrics and melody - of popular
politics in the long nineteenth century. It argues that music was a
central part of the social culture of radicalism and an important, if
neglected, element in the repertoire of politics. 

 

Dr Kate Bowan is a pianist and musicologist who has studied and taught
in Australia and the USA. She completed her PhD at the Research School
of Humanities, ANU where she is currently a Visiting Fellow. Her
research interests include early twentieth-century Western art music and
music and politics in the nineteenth century.

 

Professor Paul Pickering is a Senior Fellow and Convener of Graduate
Studies at the Research School of Humanities. Prior to taking up this
post he was a Queen Elizabeth II Fellow at the Humanities Research
Centre (2000-4). He was the Convener of Graduate Studies in History at
the Australian National University (2002-6). He is Head of the HRC
Biography Institute and a member of the Board of the Australian
Dictionary of Biography.

 

Convenors: Ken Taylor and Stephen Foster
For general enquiries please contact: 
Phone: 6125 2434
Email: administration.rsh at anu.edu.au 
Web: http://rsh.anu.edu.au/
All Welcome