Text to Act: Chaikovsky’s Songs as Embodied Emotion

In this ResearchWorks session, Philip Ross Bullock (Professor of Russian Literature and Music, University of Oxford) presents his work on Chaikovsky’s Songs.

Russian song has often been studied from the perspective of either its literary text or its musical scores. What this leaves out, however, is any understanding of its performance contexts, whether these are understood formally and analytically (i.e. the notion of lyric as a form of performativity), or historically and contextually (what the spaces of performance have historically been and how they have developed over time). Taking Chaikovsky’s songs as its basis, this talk will examine how we might reconstitute the performative aspects of the Russian song tradition.

Part of the Hands, Gestures, Voices Series.

Chaired by Dr Ceri Owen, this series of talks looks at the relationship between songs and the experience of the people who perform them. Presented in collaboration with The Oxford Song Network: Poetry and Performance, at The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities.