“Orchestras of the Mind: Neurology, Organology, and the Politics of Psyche”
FREE VIRTUAL EVENT
Music Colloquia provide a weekly forum for presentation and discussion of recent research by distinguished visitors, CWRU faculty, and graduate students in musicology, historical performance practice, and music education.
ABOUT THE TALK:
Over the past two decades the metaphor of the ‘neural orchestra’ has become ubiquitous. In professional and popular science alike, brains have been figured as ‘symphonic,’ ‘concerted,’ and ‘conducted.’ But where does this idea originate? What social and ideological substrates feed it? And what models of control does it perpetuate? These are the questions on which I meditate here, moving from the 1820s to the present, from early phrenologists to contemporary neuroscientists, and from the aesthetics of the conducted orchestra to the neuropolitics of the conducted mind.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Francesca Brittan is Associate Professor of Music at CWRU. Her work focuses on intersections between music and science and on (often inextricable) histories of sonic magic. This talk forms part of her current book, The Spectral Conductor: Histories and Post-Histories of Orchestral Power.
All Colloquia begin at 4:00 PM (Eastern Time) and will be offered virtually through the Spring 2021 semester. Members of CWRU and the wider Cleveland community are heartily welcome, as are students and colleagues at other institutions.
For Zoom meeting links to individual presentations, please contact Sophie Benn.