What shapes our responses as audiences to sung performance? And what determines conventions in the way singers present their interpretations not just vocally, but also through gesture, physicality and facial expressivity?

Susan Rutherford (Professor of Music, University of Manchester) and Laura Tunbridge (Professor of Music, University of Oxford) explore some of these issues through three performance case studies of Schumann’s Die beiden Grenadiere, sung by the English baritone Eric Marshall in 1932; the German bass Hans Hotter, in an undated recording; and finally the Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel in 2000. These three examples trace historical developments in performance practice and illuminate differing relationships between the singer and dramatic modes of expression.

Hands, Gestures, Voices

Chaired by Dr Ceri Owen (University of Cambridge), 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.