Workshop Sounds of the Past, with introductory lecture by Sasha Rasmussen

Lecture Gender and the Conservatoire: mirror to the past, incentives for the future by Sasha Rasmussen (University of Nottingham)
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Workshop – Sounds of the Past: Finding Aurality in Textual and Visual Source Material. Chair: Kurt Bertels (KCB, VUB)

Media Room, Campus Kaai. More information: https://www.kcb.be/en/pps2025

This interdisciplinary workshop is an exploration of historical soundscapes, both musical and ambient. How did people listen in the past, and how might we access their experience of sound through surviving archival materials? Especially in the absence of audio recordings, or for periods which predate this technology, what can we learn about listening practices through textual accounts or visual depictions? In analysing historical distinctions between ‘music’ and ‘noise’, or between ‘hearing’ and ‘listening’, we can retrace how sound contributed to cultural constructions of gender, race, and class, and how these soundscapes mapped onto the social geography of the modern city. Drawing on methodologies from historical musicology and sensory history, the workshop offers an introductory guide to integrating an awareness of aurality into research on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will discuss a number of case studies of historical actors who encountered sound in ways which either reinforced or subverted their sensory expectations, to illuminate the role of sound in shaping their lives and identities.

You may also like the following events from Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel:

• This month, 18th November, 09:30 am, Brussels calling: Heritage, the Romantic-Modernist Conservatoire and the Modern-Day Performer in Brussels
• This month, 23rd November, 02:30 pm, Student Sound Series | MIM in Brussels
• This month, 24th November, 02:00 pm, The Sounds of Brussels: Six Lectures on Music in Brussels, ca.1500 – ca.1800 in Brussels

Also check out other Workshops in Anderlecht, Arts events in Anderlecht, Sports events in Anderlecht.