Room 1107, Schulz Building, North Terrace, University of Adelaide
Organised by the Musicological Society of South Australia in association with the Elder School of Music, University of Adelaide. The talk will be given by Dr. Graham Strahle, Visiting Research Fellow at the Elder School, and music critic with The Australian and The Adelaide Review.
A growing literature in the last seven to eight years has asked whether the tradition of Classical music is facing a terminal decline, brought on by over-commercialisation and creative exhaustion. One of the more outspoken commentators on this subject has been Norman Lebrecht, whose books and articles have aroused considerable public controversy. This paper presents some initial answers through a fieldwork research project conducted on musicians of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and audience members. One of the central issues is how Classical music has responded in the last decade to the influence of popular musics. The findings of this research were presented last year at the Symposium of the International Musicological Society (SIMS), Melbourne 11-16 July 2004. The paper was presented in the 2004 Gordon Anderson Memorial Lecture, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, on September 2.
Contact: Christopher Wainwright (cmwain@bigpond.net.au), publicist, Mobile: 0438 829 728
