John Bird Music Research Seminar - Dr David Beard

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Talk title: ‘“Elective Affinities”: Found Objects, Musical Repurposing, and Concealed Meanings in Music by Judith Weir’ 

The music of Judith Weir (b. 1954) requires us to think carefully and deeply about her relationship with historical and other subject matter, including allusions to various musical genres, periods, styles and cultural traditions. Her sources, moreover, extend beyond music to all kinds of ‘found objects’, including literary texts and practices from different cultures and historical eras. How do we make sense of this pluralist approach? Why have these objects been chosen? And what happens to the sources when they are repurposed in Weir’s music? My answer to these questions takes an eighteenth-century concept, popularised by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as a starting point. The notion of ‘elective affinities’ concerns the conjoining of two chemical matters to produce a third, in the process of which a part of one of the original substances is lost. My focus in this paper is on the elements of Weir’s sources that are apparently lost – concealed, subverted, sublimated or overlooked – and with the question: how might our aesthetic appreciation of Weir’s music be enhanced by a consideration of these ‘lost’ properties? I draw on a range of examples, including withdrawn works, which draw on sources as diverse as early German Romanticism, and African-American, Bosnian, Chinese and Scottish folk traditions. A recurring theme among these examples is the occlusion of information relating to gender – a provocative omission, since it effectively hides the elective affinities that underpin Weir’s choices. 

David Beard specialises in contemporary music, working in particular on post-1945 British composers including Judith Weir, Harrison Birtwistle, Michael Finnissy, Peter Maxwell Davies and Simon Holt. More generally he is interested in musical creativity, avant-garde music, experimental music theatre and opera, Steve Reich, and popular music. He has been an invited speaker at public events throughout Europe, the UK and the USA, and contributed programme notes, essays and articles for, among others, the London Sinfonietta, BBC Proms, Music Theatre Wales, and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. He is Co-Editor of the monograph series 'Music Since 1900' (Cambridge University Press), a Trustee and Member of the Editorial Board of Music & Letters (Oxford University Press), a member of the Editorial Board for 'Elements in Music since 1945' (Cambridge University Press), and a member of the Advisory Board for the book series 'Theory and Analysis of Music Since 1900' (Routledge). More about David at https://profiles.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/beardd