Surprise or Satisfy – a Theory of Performance Seminar

Time:: 15:15
Date:: 29 April 2014
Venue:: Room 1083 Building 2 Highfield Campus SO17 1BJ

For more information regarding this seminar, please telephone Dr. Hettie Malcomson on 023 8059 4400 or email h.malcomson@soton.ac.uk .

Event details

Part of the Music Research Seminar series

The key to an audience’s attention is to fulfil or frustrate its expectations. How can we arouse expectation, and how do we decide what to do with it, once aroused? This theory of performance was set out in 1752 by Charles Avison, somewhat in the elliptical manner of Fermat’s Last Theorem. David Owen Norris will flesh it out with examples, including the blind-folded cellist and an occasion when Sir Peter Pears sang Eugene Onegin.

Reception to follow in the Arlott Bar.

All welcome.

Speaker information

David Owen Norris,Head of Keyboard and Percussion Studies