Academic literature on the topic 'University based conservatoria'

Abstract Over recent years, in Sweden, the vocation of textile conservator has been transformed from that of being regarded simply as a museum curator's assistant to becoming a profession in its own right. The members of the textile conservators association, the Swedish Association for Textile Conservation founded in 1967, played a crucial role in this transformation with the establishment of a university-based vocational education programme in 1985. The transformation is further scrutinized by considering aspects of gender where, for example, gender bias employment strategies favoured men as painting conservators, as well as social class where demarcation of women as curators was evident. This is discussed and compared with the contemporary shift of gender distribution among the employees in the museum sector that historically was largely male dominated. Social class and the effects of a university education on occupational status are considered, and the effects that education had on elderly, experienced colleagues are another important intersectional aspect. Today’s textile conservators have reached a professional status in several aspects with university education being probably the most important contributing factor. The image of the vocation has improved from that of a seamstress who performed repairs on textiles at the direction of her superior, to an academic who, on the basis of their scientific knowledge, independently performs the many tasks included in preservation, as well as conducting research to doctorate level. Despite this, it would seem that the museum community has not yet managed to take full advantage of textile conservators’ competence as researchers.

Abstract This study provides a compact overview of university-based music programs in Canada based on information gleaned from surveys of institutional members of the Canadian University Music Society (CUMS)—universities, colleges, and conservatories. The surveys took place between 2005 and 2009. The current report focuses on the metrics of enrolment and staffing, and goes on to provide basic data on graduate and undergraduate programs. It is a first step in sharing information that can facilitate informed advocacy in support of music in higher education both within and beyond individual institutions.

The need to apply conservation-restoration criteria in museums, heritage and public collections has been widely studied in previous publications. However, the functions of the conservator-restorer in the face of the problems of the Spanish Contemporary Art Market have hardly been addressed in scientific literature. This research is based on two objectives: firstly, to investigate how the specific technical and artistic knowledge of the conservator-restorer covers a need in the ecosystem of the Contemporary Art Market by means of expert reports, appraisal and valuation. Secondly, to analyze how these specific skills and knowledge are transferred through Higher Education programs. Based on a comparative study, the specific problems of the Spanish Art Market shall be mapped, and protocols proposed that are respectful of conservation-restoration criteria and transferable through university programs to the future contemporary art stakeholders.

The study provides a characteristic of the French model of higher musical education with a pronounced national specificity, which consists of a special division into levels, or cycles, with its own system of naming academic degrees, awarding diplomas, etc. The authors revealed that the organization of a complex “organism” of the musical education system, presented in a variety of types of public and private institutions, is based on the principle of complementarity of curricula and the identity of competitive examinations. The phenomenon of the high status of university music education is especially noteworthy. Although until recently it concerned mainly musicology and pedagogy, in the last two decades, obtaining an academic degree approved by the higher conservatory together with the university has become prestigious for musicians of various specialties, including concert performers.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an interim report on one aspect of a major project based in the Department of Music at the University of Ulster. The project, ‘Peer Learning in Music’, builds on the programme of peer assessment which was piloted in a module in performance studies on the BMus course during the academic year 1992–3 and has since become an established feature of the course. The project started in October 1996 and since then peer-learning techniques have been introduced in a range of modules throughout the course, impacting on the teaching and learning methods and the conduct of assessment. Dissemination of the nature of the work and the operation of the programmes is being actively pursued in universities, colleges and conservatories in England and Northern Ireland.

Since 1975 Richard had been based in Australia, where he taught at the Sydney Conservatorium, but he was born in England, in Chichester, and studied at Hull University. In the late 60s and early 70s he was active as a contemporary music pianist and in the mid-70s became part of the Cologne music scene, working as Stockhausen's Teaching Assistant at the Cologne Staatliche Musikhochschule from 1973 until his move to Australia. But his most significant contribution to new music was as a writer. His 1999 book on the life and work of Ligeti is a superb introduction to the composer's work, and in 2005 it was followed by his book of lectures on Stockhausen, Six Lectures from the Stockhausen Courses Kürten 2002; he also co-edited the collected writings of Ferneyhough with James Boros.

Joseph Pehrson is a well-known New York-based composer. He studied at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Michigan. He has been active in promoting contemporary music in New York, having been a co-director of the “Composers’ Concordance” concert organization from 1984 to 2011. Pehrson has written music in various styles, including neoclassical and avant-garde, microtonal music. The latter includes electronic compositions with and without solo instruments, which he wrote in the decade of the 2000s. He has delved very deeply into microtonal theory and has written compositions for various unusual and non-standard microtonal scales, such as the 21-note to the octave scale. The following is a transcript of Joseph Pehrson’s presentation at the Theremin Center, which was the Moscow Conservatory’s electronic studio in the 1990s and 2000s.

В статье рассматривается проблема качества образования в высших учебных заведениях в сложившихся системах оценивания деятельности, анализируются их достоинства и недостатки. Особое внимание уделяется рейтингам, получившим большую популярность в последнее десятилетие. Авторы обосновывают критерии оценки деятельности вузов ведущими рейтинговыми агентствами мира. Особое внимание уделяется отечественным системам рейтингования вузов и, в частности, Национальному агрегированному рейтингу, позволяющему минимизировать недостатки отдельных рейтингов. Анализу подвергается процедура рейтингования вузов искусств: в условиях сложившихся сегодня критериев не позволительно в должной мере оценить качество образовательных услуг, предоставляемых этой категорией учебных заведений. В вопросах формирования механизмов оценки озвучиваются позиции вузов разной направленности: хореографии, театрального и киноискусства, художественного и музыкального искусств. Понимая сложности в нахождении «единого измерителя» критериев и индикаторов, авторы подробно рассматривают позицию рейтингования Московской консерватории на международной конференции «Вузы искусств в международном пространстве», организованной Департаментом по науке и образованию Министерства культуры РФ в Российской академии музыки имени Гнесиных. В статье подробно обосновывается методика оценивания качества образования музыкальных вузов, основанная на учете составляющих ее компонентов. The article considers the quality of education in universities in the existing systems for assessing their activities, the advantages and disadvantages of each. Particular attention is paid to the rating system, which has gained great popularity in the last decade. The authors consider the criteria for evaluating the activities of universities by leading rating agencies of the world. Special attention is paid to domestic rating systems of universities and, in particular, to the National aggregate rating, which allows minimizing the shortcomings of individual ratings. The article examines the issues of rating universities of art, since the criteria that have developed today do not allow to adequately assess the quality of educational services provided by this category of educational institutions. In matters of the formation of assessment mechanisms, the positions of universities of various directions are voiced: choreography, theater and cinema, art and music. Understanding the difficulty in finding a “common denominator” in the criteria and categories that could be put forward by art universities, the authors examine in detail the rating positions proposed by the Moscow Conservatory at the international conference “Universities of the Arts in the International Space” organized by the Department of Science and Education of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation at the Gnesins Russian Academy of Music. The article substantiates in detail the methodology for assessing the quality of education of musical universities proposed by the Moscow Conservatory, which is based on the account of all the components of its educational activities.

Problem statement. Conductor is considered to be one of the most prestigious occupation in musical field, so there has always been a certain interest to its history. But, despite a large amount of literature, there are no musicologist’s scientific works, with the systematized and generalized materials on training conducting staff in Ukraine in the 1920s – 1940s. This is partly due to a shortage of primary documents at a difficult historical period: most of them were destroyed by the employees of state institutions before being evacuated behind the lines during the Second World War; the other part was burned down during the hostilities; the third one was lost in the territories temporarily occupied by the fascists. The most important information was restored in the postwar years on the basis of personal documents of the musicians and memoirs of the contemporaries. The names of many other talented performers, who were not high ranked in the hierarchy of Ukraine musical culture, were forgotten. Research and publications analysis. Dealing with this article, the author relied on the research of three scientists. For example, the episode devoted to the history of the Kuban State Conservatory is based on the materials of the book by V. A. Frolkin, PhD in musicology, Professor of Piano Department of Krasnodar University of Culture and Arts. (Frolkin, 2006 : 70–89). The Kharkov period of Ya. Rosenstein’s activity is based on the article by E. M. Shchelkanovtseva, PhD in musicology, Department of Orchestral String Instrument of I. P. Kotlyarevsky Kharkov National University of Arts (Shchelkanovtseva, 1992 : 178–179), as well as the memoirs of conductor S. S. Feldman (Feldman, 2006). Ya. Rosenstein activities in T. G. Shevchenko Kiev Academic Opera and Ballet Theater of the Ukrainian SSR was described in research of Yu. A. Stanishevsky – Doctor in musicology, Professor. (Stanishevsky, 1981 : 533–534). The objective of this article is to create Ya. Rosenstein’s complete and non-biased biography, to analyze various aspects of his activity, and, as a result, to revive the name of a talented musician who was at the forefront of Ukraine musical pedagogy. This is the urgency and novelty of this study. Core material. Yakov A. Rosenstein (1887–1946) – a cello player, conductor, professor. In1907–1912 he studied at St. Petersburg Conservatory specializing in cello. Until February 1917, he had served as a cello player in the Royal orchestra of the Imperial Mariinskyi Theater. During the Civil War, he moved to Yekaterinodar (Krasnodar), where in 1918–1919 he was a director of Russian Musical Society Conservatory. October 1, 1920 witnessed the opening of Kuban State Conservatory. The university was funded from the budget of the People’s Commissariat for Education, so the training of all students was free. Ya. Rosenstein taught the cello class. But at the end of 1921, the Kuban Conservatory was deprived of state funding, and in summer of 1922 the university was reorganized into the Kuban Higher Technical School. (Frolkin, 2006 : 74–89). In autumn of 1923, Ya. Rosenstein moved to Kharkov, where he was a cello player in Russian State Opera orchestra. Later Ya. Rosenstein became a theater conductor. Also, he was engaged in pedagogical activity: in 1925 he became a dean of the instrumental faculty of Kharkov State Higher Music and Drama Courses, and in 1926 he became the head of the courses. According to E. M. Shchelkanovtseva, since 1927, Ya. Rosenstein had been teaching at the Music and Drama Institute (currently – I. P. Kotlyarevsky Kharkov National University of Arts) – Professor of cello class, chamber ensemble, orchestra class, conducting; in 1929 he became an Academic Director. (Shchelkanovtseva, 1992 : 179). Opera-symphonic conducting class at Kharkov Music and Drama Institute, which was opened in autumn of 1927, is a merit of Ya. Rosenstein. During 8 years, he had been training such conductors as: P. Ya. Balenko, M. P. Budyansky, I. I. Vymer, F. M. Dolgova, K. L. Doroshenko, D. L. Klebanov, B. T. Kozhevnikov, V. N. Nakhabin, V. S. Tolba and others. In 1926–1927, the Orchestra of Unemployed Musicians in Kharkov was transformed into the First State Symphony Orchestra of All-Ukrainian Radio Committee, which in autumn of 1929 was integrated with the Ukrainian Philharmonic. In 1929–1932 Ya. Rosenstein acted as a chief conductor. Then he was replaced by German Adler, a graduate of German Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Prague, and a world-famous conductor. In 1937, this musical group was the base for creation the State Symphony Orchestra of the Ukrainian SSR in Kiev (nowadays the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine). (Pluzhnikov, 2016 : 358). In 1935–1941 and 1944–1946 Ya. Rosenstein was a conductor of T. G. Shevchenko Kiev Academic Opera and Ballet Theater of the Ukrainian SSR. According to S. S. Feldman, there he brilliantly showed himself in the ballet performances “Swan Lake” and “Sleeping Beauty” by P. Tchaikovsky, “The Fountain of Bakhchisarai” and “The Prisoner of the Caucasus” by B. Asafiev, “Lilaea” by K. Dankevich and “Raymonda” by A. Glazunov (Feldman, 2009 : 102). In summer of 1941 the War began, and the theater troupe was evacuated to Ufa. In 1942–1944 the United Ukrainian State Opera and Ballet Theater was created on the basis of the Kharkov and Kiev theaters in Irkutsk. More than 650,000 people visited 785 performances conducted by N. D. Pokrovsky, Ya. A. Rosenstein and V. S. Tolba in Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk and other cities! In June 1944, the theater troupe returned to Kyiv, and in 1946 Ya. Rosenstein died. He was buried at Baykove cemetery in Kyiv. Conclusion. The creative personality of Ya. A. Rosenstein, a cello player, conductor, teacher, one of the organizers of the First State Symphony Orchestra in Ukraine and the creators of the Kharkov school of orchestra conducting, deserves more attention on behalf of the scientists, musicians and all non-indifferent people. There is hope that Ya. A. Rosenstein’s memory will not be forgotten, and the name of this talented and noble person will take its rightful place in the annals of Ukraine and Russian musical culture.

From 1880 to 2005, the Eastman Kodak Company manufactured black-and-white fiber-based gelatin silver paper in a wide variety of weights, grades, and formats. Kodak manufacturer records and sample books include details about Kodak paper surface characteristics and are an invaluable resource for understanding photographic paper materials. Using the extensive number of Kodak data books, manuals, and manufacturing records spread out in the collections of three Rochester, New York-based institutions—George Eastman Museum, University of Rochester Special Collections, and Image Permanence Institute—I created a chronological guide to Kodak photographic paper surface characteristics. This guide is not an approximate identification guide for Kodak papers but rather a resource that can be used to fill in gaps and propose questions about Kodak manufacturing history that is no longer easily accessible. The guide aims to help researchers, photography archivists and historians, conservators, collection managers, or anyone else interested in Kodak history gain access to a better understanding of photographic paper produced by Kodak from 1930 to 1955. The process for creating the guide is described in this article and may be used as a starting point for future research while also illuminating the importance of documenting and providing access to technological and material details about photographic objects.

The problem for this project is the solution to the question, 'How can a conservatorium in a geographically isolated area with a relatively small catchment area survive and thrive in the 2000's?' This project chronicles the story of a three year strategic plan that has taken on this challenge. In order to do this it has been appropriate to discuss global conditions that are the driving forces of economies and the education systems within them. In adittion we show how these 'macro-conditions' affect the Australian Unviersity system and especially conservatoria. Having contextualized the project, we then move to an exploration of the main facilitating conditions that provided an orrprtunity to diversity the Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music in ways that better fit the international and national pressures that beset university based conservatoria. The Virtual Conservatorium, we then argue, provides a workable alternative to current conservatorium practice and at the same time provides a cost effective, contemporary, technology friendly paradigm that ensures ongoing quality and delivery effectiveness.

The nineteenth century was a burgeoning time for music theory in the West. One need only peruse a bibliography of musical writings concerning music theory and pedagogy to see that the quantity and variety of works multiplied exponentially when compared to the previous century.1 The nature of these writings varied and crossed a number of disciplinary boundaries, from elementary manuals on the fundamentals of music, through practical works of harmony, form and counterpoint, to learned studies of musical acoustics, tuning, aesthetics and psychology, among many others. The quantity and diversity of these publications pressures us to reflect on what we might properly consider to be ‘music theory’ in the nineteenth century. While this is a question that has been answered in different ways over the past century,2 in this essay we will consider a more circumscribed literature and pedagogy that deals directly with questions related to the teaching and learning of compositional skills – usually in institutional settings. This is not to say that the aim of music theory in the nineteenth century was simply to teach a young student how to become a good composer (although there are pedagogies and pedagogues who promised precisely that). More accurately, compositional music theory could be a means offered to musicians from all ranks by which they would gain an ‘inside’ understanding of the ways the vocabulary, grammar and forms of music worked in practice. Along with historical knowledge of the most important composers, genres and styles of music, music theory had become in the nineteenth century a kind of practical knowledge available for a growing community of middle-class educated musicians. So how could one gain entry to such inside compositional knowledge? In the nineteenth century, it was done in two basic ways. One could begin from ‘below’, so to speak, with a student learning the rudiments and skills of music at a very basic level and gradually ascending through a pedagogy of graded study and exercise. This is the ‘practical’ or ‘propaedeutic’ tradition of music theory. The second approach was from ‘above’, whereby one would begin by studying masterpieces of musical repertoire to gain an appreciation and understanding of canonical works and thereby see their governing principles displayed, and perhaps even gain inspiration for one’s own musical compositions. Both approaches can be found in music theory texts published in the nineteenth century – often by the same author. Whether they actually led to the same place, however, is another question altogether. Still, neither the reading of music theory textbooks nor the study of scores alone would be sufficient for learning to compose. The most important transmitters of theoretical and compositional knowledge were actually the many institutions of learning that were established in the nineteenth century for the teaching of music. The founding of the French Conservatoire national de musique et de déclamation in 1795, shortly after the revolution, marks the beginning of this important chapter of musical instruction in Europe. It is important to keep in mind that during the ancien régime of the eighteenth century, musical instruction usually took place as guild knowledge passed on by a master composer to a small number of apprentices, whether in the church, the court or – somewhat uniquely – a number of orphanages in Naples. These Neapolitan orphanages that passed on a remarkable tradition of partimenti-based training were called conservatori thus inaugurating the term as a descriptor for an institution of musical instruction.3 With the establishment of the French Conservatoire, though, musical instruction began to be more institutionalised and standardised. It became the model for many other countries which soon adopted the structure – if not necessarily the specific curriculum – of the Conservatoire for their own national institutions of musical instruction (Milan – 1807, Prague – 1808, Warsaw – 1810, Vienna – 1817, London – 1822, Leipzig – 1843, Moscow – 1866). Music theory (though not under that name) was taught in the French Conservatoire by means of three basic, though overlapping, subdivisions: harmony, counterpoint and composition.4 These divisions were often porous and fungible, with individual instructors charged with teaching two or even all three of those subjects. Yet even as all of these subjects were traditional ones found in many eighteenth-century texts of musical instruction, important changes were being introduced.

Adapting to the European framework in education, without thinking about the approaches of UNESCO, assumed that there was no type of exclusion, neither by subjects nor by profiles, however, we find a clear void regarding the competencies that a professional of music must acquire, in their training and for their employability. Not only in the strictest areas such as the Conservatories, but also in elementary schools and at the University. Our work required the help of professionals from music schools, because current laws do not refer to work in the area of competences, except in some decrees where professional competences are mentioned, or in other cases, where reference is simply made to integrate the basic skills of primary schools. The results were a proposal of basic Competences in music, which could include both conservatories and music schools, regardless of the instrumental specialty, which is a first step to establish a criterion that unifies the criteria for this group of teachers.

The Suermondt-Ludwig Museum (Aachen) holds five Spanish fifteenth-century panel paintings in their collection. The five panels are all fragments, likely removed from their original settings at the turn of the nineteenth century during the upheaval of the Napoleonic Wars and sold on the art market after extensive restoration. Three of these five panels have been already treated at SRAL. The additional two will undergo a full conservation campaign in the coming year carried out in collaboration with conservation students from the University of Amsterdam and conservation training programmes in Spain. A treatment protocol was devised to ensure a systematic and sympathetic treatment, including reintegration. This provided key skill development for the trainee conservators. The removal of non-original surface materials revealed overcleaned and severely damaged surfaces. The integration of these surfaces required an innovative approach to return a sense of authenticity to the artworks, individually and as a disparate group. The subtle shift in gloss and texture between areas of paint and gilding, between different pigments bound in animal glue, egg tempera, and oleo-resinous glazes had been lost. The selection of conservation materials for infilling and retouching aimed to return this ephemeral play on light to the surfaces. This paper will discuss this innovative approach using the reintegration of one of the set of five panel paintings: the “Adoration of the Kings” (Inventory number: GK 243) as a case study. The materials were carefully chosen so as not to be mistaken for original materials in the future. The approach entailed thinking out of the box and approaching the filling and retouching stages simultaneously rather than as independent actions. This allowed a more holistic strategy to reintegration than if all losses were filled first prior to retouching. The filling materials utilised are based on a studio formulation consisting of a novel combination: Arbocel 500 (cellulose fibres) bound in a mixture of Aquazol 500 (poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline)) and Methocel A4M (methylcellulose) bound in water. This mixture was used to fill deeper losses and modified with aluminium hydroxide powder to create a surface fill. The protocol used began with testing of the materials to find the right formulation; adaptations for the typology of fill were incorporated into this design. The filler formulation is modified to best adapt to the specific losses in each area of each panel. The decision not to re-varnish the panels allowed filling and retouching to be carried out simultaneously and the different gloss surfaces of individual paint areas to be imitated by modifying the amount of retouching binding media (Aquazol 200 dissolved in ethanol/water). The resulting appearance allows different colour and surface finishes to retain their independent characteristics and returns a more authentic surface finish to the fifteenth-century artworks.