Conference Agenda
The Online Program of events for the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
Use the "Filter by Track or Type of Session" or "Filter by Session Topic" dropdown to limit results by type. Some of the sessions are also color-coded: purple indicates performances, grey indicates paper forums, and orange indicates sessions which have been organized by one of the regional associations of IMS (ARLAC or IMSEA). (Sessions which are both IMS sessions and performances are only colored orange.)
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Click on the session name for a detailed view (with participant names and abstracts).
Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 1st Sept 2026, 02:57:54am EDT
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Daily Overview |
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Interpreting Early 20th Century French Art Music Session Chair: Sylvia Kahan | |
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Singing on the Instrument, Playing on the Voice? Time and Timbre in Cello and Voice Recordings of Fauré’s Après un rêve Universidad Complutense de Madrid, This paper explores the interpretative afterlives of Gabriel Fauré’s Après un rêve through a comparative analysis of 24 historical recordings (1915–1999) for voice and cello. Focusing on expressive timing, dynamics, vibrato, portamento, and soloist–accompanist coordination (i.e., (a)synchrony), it argues that recorded performance operates not as a neutral container of works but as an active site of expressive negotiation. In this context, Après un rêve becomes a medium-transversal space, where musical meaning is continually re-voiced through the timbral and temporal specificities of each performance body. Drawing special attention to Pau Casals’s influential recordings and transcription, the paper shows how cellists and singers deploy overlapping rhetorical strategies—rubato, glissando, and dynamic contouring—to shape phrase structure and poetic trajectory. Singers, grounded in breath and text, engage prosodic inflections and timing elasticity, while cellists invoke voice-like gestures through bow articulation and vibrato shaping. These idiomatic grammars often blur, creating zones of stylistic convergence that transcend traditional medium boundaries. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach combining close listening with micro-analytical tools—timing graphs, vibrato plots, and expressive asynchrony metrics—framed not as definitive explanations but as heuristics for artistically informed analysis. These data illuminate how expressive decisions are shaped by embodiment, medium affordances, and historical context. Through this lens, vibrato speed, portamento placement, and rubato arcs are interpreted as performative gestures that reflect broader interpretive values and evolving aesthetic norms. Rather than treating transcription as mere transfer, the chapter examines it as expressive re-articulation. The cello versions of Après un rêve do not simply imitate the voice but reinterpret its affective and rhetorical functions, often highlighting different aspects of the work’s emotional and structural grammar. Casals’s phrase shaping, for instance, mirrors poetic syntax, while later recordings exhibit smoother, more coordinated profiles reflective of shifting performance cultures. Ultimately, Après un rêve emerges as a performative palimpsest—an expressive field where historical practices, corporeal constraints, and idiomatic creativity intersect. The findings contribute to broader discourses on the historiography of interpretation, intermediality in performance, and the embodied politics of musical time, offering a model of analysis that bridges musicology, performance studies, and artistic research. | |