Events - Talks & Lectures

What Is This That Stands Before Me?

The Tritone and Musical Meaning

08 Dec 2011

Talk in The Space, 7pm. Free.
Performance in The Galleries, 8pm, Free.

What do the ominous tones of Klaus Weber's 'Large Dark Wind Chime' (Arab Tritone) mean? To many, they will sound terrifying. The tritone has, after all, long been linked with the devil. Legend has it that it was banned in the Middle Ages, and blues players would refuse to play it for fear of conjuring up the dark master. Yet there is another potential narrative to its dissonance - one which acknowledges difference, rejects closure and is, in the words of musicologist Dane Rudhyar 'the music of true and Spiritual democracy'.
Drawing on theories of dissonance and noise alongisde contemporary political theory, David Bell will chart the politics of dissonance and suggest that dissonance can be seen as a utopian, emancipatory force.

The talk will be followed by a performance of a specially commissioned piece by Nottingham duo Surfacing- of whom Bell is a member. Entitled 'What Is This That Stands Before Me?', the performance will sample Weber's sculpture and famous works of dissonance (as well as creating plenty of its own).

Surfacing will question - what is it that stands before the audience? Fear and the abyss? Or a peculiar kind of hope?

Listen to audio from the event here (23.7MB)