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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Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 1st Sept 2026, 02:34:27am EDT
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Daily Overview |
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Gendered Bodies on Stage Session Chair: Jessica Payette | |
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A Gestural Education of Gender: Embodied Choreographies in Gustav Holst’s St Paul’s Suite Yale University Although today best known as a composer, Gustav Holst (1874–1934) devoted much of his time and energy to teaching music at schools and colleges. From 1905 until his death, he taught at St Paul’s Girls School (SPGS) in Hammersmith, London, where he composed several works for his students, most notably the St Paul’s Suite (1912–13). This orchestral suite is extraordinary in comparison with contemporaneous works written for school-age girls (Green 1997; Solie 2004). Not only is it technically challenging, but it also contains numerous moments of a markedly boisterous nature—often requiring physically demanding bowing motions. The work is thus at odds with early-twentieth-century conservative attitudes surrounding young girls’ physical and social comportment. This paper examines the St Paul’s Suite from the perspective of its original performers in the SPGS orchestra, treating Holst’s score as a set of instructions that dictate specific choreographies of movement. I theorize the schoolgirls’ experience of embodying the gestures involved in playing the Suite in relation to the gendered values taught at SPGS, as described by students and staff (Gray 1927; Hirschfeld 1955; Short 1990; Bailes 2000; Mitchell 2001). Drawing on theorizations of gender, gesture and agency, and social formation (Mauss 1973; Butler 1988, Cusick 1994; Noland 2009; Spatz 2015; Montague 2024), I examine how this embodied experience might impact performers’ habitus (Bourdieu 1977)—their way of interacting with the world through socially acquired habits. From here, I posit Holst’s music as a site for learning new kinesthetic knowledges through gesture. In prescribing movement types not customarily practiced by girls of this era, Holst’s composition provided a site of agency and resistance where Holst’s students could counteract the gender-based social conditioning of their bodies and minds. I argue that playing the Suite thus provided a physical education that, in turn, taught gender, allowing the musicians to perform novel modes of being that exceeded the typical limitations of pre-war girlhood. This paper expands Holst scholarship beyond its typical focus on biography, works, and reception to examine gender, pedagogy, performers, and embodiment. More broadly, bringing sociocultural specificity to the body nuances existing approaches to theorizing embodiment in musical performance. | |