I’m excited to announce that I will be editing a collective volume named Nikolai Medtner: Music, Aesthetics, and Contexts in collaboration with Christoph Flamm, which will be published with Olms Verlag during 2020. Funding is provided by the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts. The volume is designed to discuss Medtner’s music and artistic thought from different perspectives, aiming to cover multiple aspects of the composer’s work and life. Contributions from various musical and scholarly backgrounds are welcome. If you are involved with Medtner and wish to submit an article, please send your abstract and academic bio by September 30, 2019. Full texts in English language, ranging between 25,000 and 40,000 characters, should be submitted by January 31, 2020. — Here is the official Call for Contributions.
Research
How to Use Your Doctoral Degree
Part One: Written Correspondence
(1) Feel free to sport your doctoral degree in your email signature module, letterhead, or address stamp.
(2) State your doctoral degree in the displayed sender name of your email account, if you really do consider it necessary.
(3) Refrain from including your doctoral degree, or any abbreviation of it, in your email address, such as philip.dee.phd@ac.edu or dr.donald.rump@cumbridge.pov.jiz. If at all possible, also avoid writing it on envelopes by hand.
(4) Do not, by all means, sign your correspondence with your doctoral degree attached to your name, regardless of how cordially, sincerely, or respectfully you choose to express your salutation. Your conversation partner will appreciate your modesty. Thanks for your attention.
Part Two: Oral Conversation
(1) Do not introduce yourself with your doctoral degree. (Well, this should go without saying.)
(2) Do not expect others to address you by your doctoral degree.
(3) Do not mention your doctoral degree in non-academic conversations unless requested by a legal authority, Elsa of Brabant, or Master Yoda (»Decently behave you must!«).
Be my Genius!
I wrote a few lines on the questionable tendency in classical music journalism to refer to performers as ›geniuses‹ and to conductors as ›maestri‹. Not that anybody asked for my opinion, and I guess that some of you don’t care at all—but that’s exactly why I felt the need to express my uneasiness with that matter. Out now in VAN Magazin. Your thoughts are appreciated.
PhD Defence Ahead
Dear Viennese people, I have the pleasure to announce the public defence of my PhD thesis, a musicological study of the piano sonatas of Russian composer Nikolai Karlovich Medtner. Attendance will require your early bird virtues—but in case you are willing to take up this challenge, I’d be delighted if you joined me next Friday, 5 April, 9 am, in the Rectorate Meeting Room of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. The presentation will see me giving a 20-minute talk, followed by a 40-minute disputation, both held in German language.
A bilingual abstract of the dissertation is available here.
Get more information on my research related to Medtner’s music.
Music and (A)social Media
The latest issue of Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (#1 / 2019) features an article and interview by Anna Schürmer on the relationship of social media and contemporary music, with noteworthy statements by Moritz Eggert, Johannes Kreidler, Irene Kurka, and Martin Tchiba, and also including a few thoughts on digital communication and publication from my humble perspective. Thanks for providing the platform!