Wednesday 11 April 2012

Ligeti Conference March 2012: some reflections

I organised a conference of Ligeti's later music on 30th March at Senate House (in association with the Institute of Music Research - and with their support) which has taken up a fair bit of my time over the last few months. This is the first major confernce I have organised and it seemed to be a success judging by responses received. I was particularly pleased to see the number of speakers and delegates that had travelled from US, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Holland, Hungary, and Norway. The conference was mainly a series of papers plus a lecture recital by Ian Pace, a parallel analysis session for composers (led by Peter Wiegold) and a chamber 'performance' of Ligeti's Poeme Symphonique (we didn't quite manage 100 metronomes but there were two that seemed particularly persistent at the end).
    What was valuable at the conference was making contact with Ligeti scholars who one had read but not met, and being socialise with them before and after the conference. On reflection I think there should have been a round table session at the end (there wasn't time in the schedule) and it would have been good to have had questions after each speaker. I had allowed 30 minutes for each speaker to include 5 minutes for questions, but the reality was that the full 30 minutes was usually taken up with the papers (which is quite understandable) - and there was little slack in the day. There were also technical issues which soaked up time - almost inevitable when so many different computers were being used (our technical support was excellent and it is absolutely essential to have someone good to cover this). I liked the range of our speakers which showed many different approaches to the nature of the conference paper. At previous conferences I often feel that the papers were not really designed to be read out, but rather needed to be read as an article which can be quite tedious.
    There is a general orthodoxy to read papers at conferences which can be quite a challenge for the listener (I whish I had the confidence not to do this myself - our keynote speaker Richard Steinitz avoided reading out a paper, which made what he had to say very engaging). If I had to do this again I would allow more time for the papers and include a round table session at the end. I didn't do a general call for papers (on helpful advice from a colleague) and simply invited who I thought would have the most interesting things to say about Ligeti's music. I think this worked well - student researchers have plenty of other opportunities to present their work. One final thought is that it does take a lot of time and energy to organise - so bear that in mind if you feel the urge.
see Ligeti Conference London 2012  for full details - the papers will be published in Contemporary Music Review shortly.