Dr Christopher Wiley has delivered a paper on musical biography at the ‘Music and Literature: Innovations, Intersections, and Interpretations’ conference hosted at Merchiston Campus, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, Scotland on 14-15 June 2018.
Entitled ‘Musical biography and the (non-)consonance of music and literature’, Dr Wiley’s paper revealed how biographical narratives might actually contradict the evidence of the music itself, or they may represent an appropriation of specific works for a given time and place, or function to promote them within wider reading communities who may otherwise be unfamiliar with that music.
Dr Wiley drew case studies from his wider research conducted over the years on musical biography, including the apocryphal story of Mozart’s Requiem, the earliest 12 volumes of the ‘Master Musicians’ series, and Ethel Smyth’s autobiographies. The two-day conference was attended by some 50 delegates.
Further information may be found at the conference website: https://musicandliteratureconference.wordpress.com/
The full programme for the event is available online here: https://musicandliteratureconference.wordpress.com/programme/
DR CHRISTOPHER WILEY 