Three professors in the Music Department will be presenting at Humanities Day 2024: Philip V. Bohlman, Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History, Music and the Humanities in the College; Steven Rings, Associate Professor in the Department of Music; and Martha Feldman, Ferdinand Schevill Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Music and the College.
Philip V. Bohlman will be giving the keynote address, "On Goodness," at 11:00 AM in the Logan Center for the Arts Performance Hall. Steven Rings will be presenting on Bob Dylan's bridges during the 1:30 PM session, and Martha Feldman will be discussing "Vocal Deliriums" in the 2:30 PM session. Learn more about their presentations below.
Humanities Day 2024 will take place on Saturday, October 26. View the full schedule of events and register to attend in person or on zoom here.
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Keynote Address: On Goodness
Presenter: Philip V. Bohlman
Location: Logan Center for the Arts, Performance Hall
Time: 11:00 AM-12:00 PM
Asked what the primary goal of their teaching and research is, many music scholars, and ethnomusicologists in particular, may answer simply: “to do good in the world.” The goodness that motivates music scholars, however, is anything but simple. Rather it takes shape as intersecting experiences of knowledge and practice in the humanities. It is the pursuit of those experiences that leads scholars to empower musical practice through the force of moral imperative. Philip V. Bohlman joins with musician colleagues from the “New Budapest Orpheum Society” and the “Chicago Mehfil” to give voice and sound to goodness for the sites and moments of precarity in today’s world.
This presentation will be offered in person and on Zoom.
Bob Dylan's Bridges Revisited
Presenter: Steven Rings
Location: Logan Center for the Arts
Time: 1:30-2:30 PM
Bob Dylan is best known for his songs in verse-refrain form. Think of the many tunes with long, florid verses that end with a refrain line, which often includes the song’s title. “Desolation Row” and “Tangled Up in Blue” are two famous examples. However, a significant number of his songs follow different formal outlines, among them 12-bar blues, verse-chorus, and 32-bar song form. In this presentation, the presenter is interested in exploring songs that include a bridge. What role do bridges play in Dylan’s songs? What does the presence or absence of a bridge say about the song's genre? How does Dylan mark a bridge lyrically through changes in prosody, subject matter, tone, or literary register? And how do these lyrical shifts relate to musical ones that mark the bridge, especially as regards harmony and melody?
The presenter argues that Dylan’s bridges sometimes open new interior spaces within a lyric, like an affective hidden chamber; at other times, they mark a registral downshift into the colloquial or mundane; in still others, they are spaces of play and concentrated wit. The session will explore bridges in “Ballad of a Thin Man” (1965, his first song to include one), “Just Like a Woman” (1966), “Sign on the Window” (1970), “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” (1974), and “Moonlight” (2001).
Vocal Deliriums
Presenter: Martha Feldman
Location: Logan Center for the Arts
Time: 3:00-4:00 PM
How do singers cast spells on listeners? And why does singing carrying such special powers to cause deliriums and entrancements, even beyond preaching, acting, or rallying the masses? This presentation looks at the circuitry that operates between singers-as-spell-casters and target-listeners. It finds provocative evidence for causing deliriums in listeners in accounts of falling in love, especially as they relate to self-loss, longing, memory, and feelings of bittersweetness, or what the Greeks call feelings of “sweetbitter.” The evidence adduced comes from Stendhal as well as a cluster of writers circa 1870‒1900 who enlarged on their experiences of hearing otherworldly and divine sounds in the transporting voices of late Vatican castrati.