Research Seminar in Music: Practise-led Early Recording Research: reconstructing, relearning, reflecting

Speaker: Dr Inja Stanovic

Abstract

The use and importance of early recordings in performance practice research is widely known and acknowledged. In recent years, early sound evidence has been an inspiration for both performers and academic researchers in a variety of different music-based disciplines.

Unfortunately, very little research has focussed upon the production of such recordings, or the extent to which performers needed to adjust their playing in response to the recording medium and recording process. This talk discusses findings from (Re)constructing Early Recordings: a guide for historically-informed performance, a research project supported by the Leverhulme Trust and University of Huddersfield (2017-2021).

Unique and highly experimental, the project focussed upon the production of early recordings made with mechanical technologies, and aimed to understand the extent to which performers needed to adjust their playing in response to the recording medium and recording process.

Throughout four years, various recording contexts were reconstructed, including various phonograph cylinder recordings, and 7 and 10 inch records of solo piano and diverse chamber settings.

By presenting a selection of recorded materials, and discussing various mechanical recording technologies, the talk proposes a new research method in the study of early recordings, and suggests ways in which technological and reconstructive contexts form a redefinition of strategies of documentation, thus influencing future readings of early recordings and historically informed practices.

About the speaker

Inja Stanović is a Croatian pianist and researcher born in Zagreb and currently residing in London. Inja finished her PhD at the University of Sheffield, focusing on the nineteenth-century performance practice relating to the work of Frédéric Chopin (“Chopin in Great Britain, 1830 to 1930: reception, performance, recordings”, 2016).

Inja’s playing and research were awarded scholarships and grants from AHRC (2021); RMA (2020, 2019); Institute of Musical Research (2019), The City of London Phonograph and Gramophone Society (2018), Leverhulme Trust (2017), Australian Government (2012); French Government; (2006); Frankopan Awards (2013, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006); Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports (2008, 2007, 2006), amongst others.

As a pianist, Inja has performed throughout the world, including concerts in Croatia, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, the

United Kingdom, and the United States. Besides being an active pianist, Inja has published articles in HARTS and Mind Journal, Swedish Musicological Journal, Musica Iagellonica, and Seismograf journals; and has book chapters in Softwaregestützte Interpretationsforschung: Grundsätze, Desiderate und Grenzen, Musical Networking in the ‘Long 19th Century’, and The integration of a work: from miniature to large scale.

Her first co-edited volume Early Sound Recordings: Research and Practice is about to be published by Routledge in 2022. Inja is also a coinvestigator in AHRC funded research network, Redefining Early Recordings as Sources for Performance Practice and History. Inja currently works as a Lecturer in Music at City University, London.