People

Our friend Jean-Jacques (Janjac) Nattiez is writing a survey on musical semiotics in recent years for the French musicological journal Musurgia. He said he has been absent from our meetings because he was gathering further evidence for his theories. These inquiries have led him, as we know, to the field of ethnomusicology, as well. However, now he is interested in attending the ICMS congresses, and we shall certainly be most interested in hearing about his new findings. 

This spring, Robert S. Hatten will be a visiting professor at Indiana University, Bloomington. Danuta Mirka, from Katowice, has been invited as one of the European speakers for the annual meeting of the (American) Society for Music Theory, to be held in Atlanta, next fall. 

Some years ago, Raymond Monelle presented in our doctoral seminar in Helsinki a useful memo list for beginning seminar/congress speakers, which I try to recall here (and also comment on): 

1. Don't sit! 
2. You are making an oral presentation, so don't seem to be reading! 
3. Look your audience in the eyes! 
4. Don't put up a barrier between you and the audience! 
5. Watch the time! 
6. Write names! (especially difficult words) 
7. Always give translations! 
8. "Quote"! 
9. Play the music! 
10. Use acetates and handle questions! 

If everyone would follow these suggestions, I believe the seminars would be much nicer than they sometimes are. However, some of the suggestions may be culture-bound. For instance, in France it is completely normal for one to read a prepared text. Also, in Europe, listeners are expected to know languages. 

Isabelle Servant, from IUFM at Nizza, has been active in translating, editing, and writing articles for Scientae Musicae Review.  

Pozzi Escot and Robert Cogan, from the New England Conservatory, Boston, are so tremendously active all the time, that I cannot reproduce here their whole "dossier" of 1998. They are now taking their sabbatical in Europe and spending much of their time lecturing on the life and work of Hildergard von Bingen. 

At the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Maria Cristina Futuro Bittencourt defended her thesis on the comparison of two analyses of Heitor Villa-Lobos's Choros. They were studies by Gerard Béhague and Eero Tarasti. Her approach was somewhat semiotical. Another student from the same University is now starting his second year as a doctoral student at Helsinki University, namely, Mr. Luiz Fernando de Lima. His topic is the semiotic analysis of samba. 

There might be the possibility of organizing something around musical semiotics in Venezuela, to judge from a recent letter from UNESCO, transmitted to us by Venezuelan semiotician Drina Hocevar. We shall see how the matter proceeds. 

Maciej Jablonski, who has been so actively organizing those nice interdisciplinary symposia in musicology at the University of Poznan, has now defended his doctoral thesis entitled Music as Sign: Eero Tarasti's Theory of Musical Semiotics. The book is now in Polish but will appear in English. Moreover Jablonski has published an analysis on the Polish composer Krzysztof Meyer.  

At the beginning of the year (January 1998), Esti Sheinberg defended her doctoral thesis at Edinburgh University on Irony, Satire, Parody and the Grotesque in the Music of D. D. Shostakovich. It is a 340-page study on this great Russian, who certainly belongs to the category of "semiotical" composers. Sheinberg shows perfect mastery of the subtleties of humour in Shostakovitch, as well as a command of Russian formalist theories. The book likewise has interesting sub-themes, such as Jewishness in music. I have heard that the book might soon appear via an international publisher. 

Mireille Vial-Henninger from the University of Lille has published her doctoral thesis as a book in the series Presses Universitaires de Septentrion; it was originally defended at the Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV). The title of the book Essai de mythe-analyse du processus de création musicale: Justification, Méthode, Application. Beethoven , la 23o Sonate dite Appassionata (exposition), Berlioz, Episode de la vie d'un artiste: La Symphonie Fantastique suivie de Lélio ou le retour à la vie. It is not said in the book whether the publisher is Paris IV, but it seems that the book can be ordered from the following address: Rue du barreau BP 199, 59654 Villeneuve d'Ascq, cedex France. The price is 365 French francs. The author is inspired by the theories of Charles Mauron and Gilbert Durand, as her lecture at the Aix congress showed.