Setting Agendas Conference, 18 September 2009
For many modern writers and composers, music and literature make an ungainly combination. Yet recent years have seen British composers enlist a series of high-profile literary collaborators for operatic works, from Ian McEwan and Simon Armitage to Seamus Heaney and Vikram Seth. How might this change the relationship between the libretto and the performed work? What questions does the raise about the way modern operatic music is being listened to and disseminated? What are the pragmatics of interdisciplinary collaboration?
Setting Agendas: Text-Setting and the Libretto in Contemporary British Music, is a one-day conference that will approach these questions in a variety of ways. Poets and composers who have worked together will offer their own perspectives on collaborative projects, academics whose work has focused on the British libretto will trace recent developments in the form, and leading British composers will explore how practical and aesthetic considerations inform their use of the written word. The conference will conclude with a short chamber performance.