Biography and the New Musicology

Traditional musicology has long resisted biographical interpretations in favor of formalistic approaches. While the so-called “New Musicology” has more recently redressed this imbalance by encouraging the contextualization of music, including critical studies that take account of issues of biography in relation to musical works, the ideologies of musical biography themselves have remained largely unexplored. In consequence, the modern discipline may have unwittingly absorbed wholesale many of the tendencies that accumulated within the genre in the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The many fascinating scholarly studies of musical biography to have recently appeared offer little assistance in this respect, for they primarily scrutinize the assumptions that historically underpinned the genre without giving due consideration to their lingering existence within current musicology. This essay surveys of some of the most fascinating biographical readings that have appeared in recent years in order to demonstrate that debates such as those over Schubert’s sexuality and Shostakovich’s relationship with the Soviet regime, as well as various other hermeneutical studies conducted in relation to aspects of composers’ lives, have a wider grounding within musical biography’s historical preoccupations than has hitherto been recognized. I show the continuing presence in modern musicology of the phenomenon by which attempts to redress a past biographical misconception merely re-inscribe a new one in place of the old, and argue that the current climate of epistemic inclusivity is such that consideration of the extent to which a given study may be a reflection of its author is now more important than ever. By way of conclusion, I advocate the future cultivation of a more self-reflexive approach in biographical scholarship within musicology, one that knowingly takes into account the relationship between different composer biographies rather than merely focusing on that of a single figure in isolation

“When a woman speaks the truth about her body”: Ethel Smyth, Virginia Woolf, and the challenges of lesbian auto/biography

As professionals who encountered first-hand the invidious barriers within patriarchal society that hindered career women, Ethel Smyth and Virginia Woolf both used their published writings to pursue lifelong crusades against the under-representation of females in their respective disciplines. This article compares the different strategies by which the two artists strove to tell the truth about their experiences as women, and considers the corresponding implications for Smyth’s musical output. While the egotistical Smyth candidly recounted stories relating to herself, Woolf excised overt authorial presence from her texts, instead invoking fictitious, protean narrators to reflect the collective unconsciousness of Womanhood. Woolf’s encouragement and criticism of Smyth’s literary endeavours are examined in the context of her biographical theories and feminist critiques, and of the lesbian proclivities of both women. Their published writings and personal documents suggest that Smyth actively appealed to the very autobiographical strategies that Woolf persistently counselled her to subvert, in order to compete with the (heterosexual) patriarchy on equal terms. She apparently held this option to be the only available one through which to insinuate herself within the canonical traditions specific to music, as distinct from those of literature

Development of a flight-qualified whole-body dosimeter system Final report

Whole-body dosimeter system for monitoring radiation exposure to crew during space mission

Multifrequency Aperture-Synthesizing Microwave Radiometer System (MFASMR). Volume 1

Background material and a systems analysis of a multifrequency aperture - synthesizing microwave radiometer system is presented. It was found that the system does not exhibit high performance because much of the available thermal power is not used in the construction of the image and because the image that can be formed has a resolution of only ten lines. An analysis of image reconstruction is given. The system is compared with conventional aperture synthesis systems

Divided by a Common Language? Evaluating Students’ Understanding of the Vocabulary of Assessment and Feedback at a Single UK Higher Education Institution

Recent changes in UK Higher Education have renewed the importance of ensuring that assessment practices are transparent and comprehensible, not least in terms of the criteria by which the evaluation is conducted and the timeliness with which the results of that evaluation are delivered. The policies that underpin assessment and feedback, and the formal documentation to which they give rise, are necessarily robust for reasons of quality assurance and to support the learning experience, and in consequence they are typically loaded with standard terminology whose intended meaning may not be as readily apparent to students as to staff. Much work therefore remains to be undertaken in consulting with students to develop strategies to help negotiate the vocabulary of current practices such that institutional regulatory frameworks are satisfied without sacrificing intelligibility to the purported target audience. This research draws on a series of interviews and other consultations with students conducted at City University London, UK in the 2011–12 academic year with the purpose of reviewing their understanding of the fundamental vocabulary of assessment practice, whether that vocabulary appears within the learning outcomes and assessment criteria, the feedback itself, or the wider context of assessment policy. Ultimately, it explores whether staff and students in Higher Education are presently being divided by a common language, and, in light of the students’ narratives, proposes a series of recommendations by which assessment and feedback practices may be improved. Such recommendations include the provision of papers submitted by previous students for the benefit of current cohorts, a more active engagement of students with the regulatory documentation, a greater use made of dialogic feedback methods, and the need for change to the existing educational culture to facilitate these enhancements

Academic Leadership in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: A Personal Reflection on one Programme Director’s Professional Development

This article provides a critical commentary on my development in academic leadership in a number of learning and teaching roles in Higher Education, principally that of Programme Director of the BMus programme at City University London (2009–13). It proceeds by interweaving discussion of aspects of the scholarly literature that has influenced my academic leadership over the years with personal reflection on the application of these theories to activities associated with my roles. Ground covered in the course of the article includes the ways in which academic leadership is distinct from other forms of leadership; the collaborative nature of academic leadership; the implications to leadership of the substantial changes witnessed in UK Higher Education in recent years; approaches to change management in relation to academic leadership; the current emphasis given nationally to metric-based performance measures, and the dangers posed by unrealistic goal-setting; the different qualities that may be embodied by an academic leader; and the transferral of leadership experience to different roles and institutional contexts