Keynote Speaker: Natasha Loges
“Femininity, Fragments and Fingers: Reconstructing Brahms’s Intellectual World”
Saturday 2 February, 5.45–6.45, Winifred Smith Hall
How do we reconstruct a lost intellectual world? Drawing on Aleida Assmann’s ideas on cultural memory, as well as those of other thinkers, I will discuss the historiographical challenges of understanding an era which leaves us such an abundance of documented material that we are at risk of ignoring the far larger undocumented past. I will approach this through three connected topics which I argue played a significant but unrecognised role in shaping Brahms’s intellectual world. The first is the importance of the feminine, both through the exceptional and unexceptional women Brahms knew, as well as the broader role of women in 19th-century cultural life. The second theme is the idea of the fragment, represented both by the publishing context of the lyric poetry Brahms set, as well as the philosophical implications of concert life in his day. Finally, I will turn to the challenging implications of performance for music history in a wide sense, before turning to some recent research in 19th-century performance practice, and closing with a reflection on the central importance of live piano-playing, music ‘under the fingers’ for Brahms’s generation.
Natasha Loges is the author of Brahms and His Poets (Boydell & Brewer, 2017) and, with Katy Hamilton, co-editor of Brahms in the Home and the Concert Hall (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Johannes Brahms in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Her research interests include German song in the long nineteenth century, concert history, 19th-century performance practices, word-music relationships, and the life and music of Johannes Brahms. Further publications include articles/chapters in The Cambridge Companion to the Singer-Songwriter, the Cambridge History of Musical Performance and and Music and Literature in German Romanticism. Her journal articles are published in 19th-Century Music, Music & Letters, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, and Indiana Theory Review, amongst others.
Dr Loges is Head of Postgraduate Programmes at the Royal College of Music, London. She performs regularly as a song accompanist at venues including Wotton Hall, the Holywell Music Room, St John’s Smith Square London, the Austrian Cultural Forum, Leith Hill Place and as part of the Bösendorfer Piano Series. She broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 (Record Review, Building a Library, Composer of the Week, and Music Matters) and reviews art song recordings for BBC Music Magazine. Natasha regularly gives talks for festivals and concerts, particulary the Oxford Lieder Festival. She is a member of the TORCH-funded Oxford Song Network. Her research has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy.
