Keynote Address
Interpreting Topics for Performance:
Gesture, Texture, Troping, Virtual Agency, and Emotion
ROBERT S. HATTEN is Professor Emeritus and Emeritus Holder of the Marlene and Morton Meyerson Professorship in Music at The University of Texas at Austin. He is author of Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation (1994), Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert (2004), and A Theory of Virtual Agency for Western Art Music (2018). His book-in-progress focuses on textural strategies in solo keyboard works from Bach to Brahms.
Abstract
What are the implications of topics for performance? How might the kinesthetic associations of topics (especially stylized dance topics) be realized in musical gestures? Can texture provide hints to interpreting topics? How do topics interact as tropes: from blending (as in metaphor) to resistance (as in irony)? Do topics ever imply virtual agency? How might a performer embody, and enact, topically cued expressive trajectories?