Workshop “Letting go”:

Control and its loss in the context of musical actions

Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, musician, associate professor, Department of Pre-School Education, University of Thessaly.

The workshop is part of the course “Audiovisual Representations and Image Processing Techniques”, Tuesday 25/11/14, 17:30 -20:30 pm, DeptArch Amphitheatre

How is music written down? Is the score an accurate representation of the music? Which are the logics that underpin different ways of written representation of musical events? What is being gained and what is being lost when a piece of music is notated? Which are the aspects that different forms of notation seek to control and why? Who controls what escapes control of the 'composer'? Which are the aspects that different forms of written musical representation 'let go'? And why? Looking at different ways of notating music (from Bach to Cardew) we aim at discussing the issue of controlling (or refusing to control) different aspects of the musical material; this discussion is going to lead us to a practical experimentation with ways of controlling noise so as to render it 'musical'. We end by creating a little piece that addresses the issue of the relationships between music, noise and multitude.

See the workshop’s poster.

Panagiotis A. Kanellopoulos is Associate Professor of Music Education at the Department of Early Childhood Education, University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece. He received his MA and Ph.D in Music Education from Reading University (UK). He has taught music education courses at the University of the Aegean, and was previously Lecturer of Music Education at the Department of Music Studies, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Research interests include: socio-cultural perspectives on musical creativity, ethnographic approaches to musical improvisation, as well as possible conjunctures between philosophy of music education and political theory. He has co-edited the volume Arts in Education-Education in the Arts (Athens, Nissos, 2010). His work has been published in international edited volumes and major research journals (Resonance, Psychology of Music, Philosophy of Music Education Review, Action Criticism and Theory for Music Education, British Journal of Music Education, Educational Philosophy and Theory). He studied the mandolin with Alison Stephens and Manos Hadjidakis' collaborator Vivi Gheka and has for many years been a frequent and dedicated performer of Hadjidakis' music, working in small ensembles, with the Orchestra of Colors (founded by Hadjidakis), the ERT Choir and the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra.