Pathways in Early Music Conference: From HIP to HIP (Historically Inclusive Performance)

University of California, Los Angeles
November 17 and 18, 2023

Livestream (Click "Other" tab to livestream conference)
Livestream (Click "Other" tab to livestream conference)
Livestream (Click "Other" tab to livestream conference)

The Early Music Revival of the mid-twentieth century invigorated scholars, instrument makers, and performers in the search for sounds of a past implicitly understood to be white and European. With roots in lively cultures of musical amateurism in England and the Netherlands, “Historically Informed Performance” (or HIP) brought professionals and the self-taught together in a common enthusiasm. Today, HIP has been thoroughly professionalized, with its own corner of the recording market, superstars, and advanced degrees. This has had profound consequences, making HIP a marketable product instead of a communitarian process. Now, as Classical music communities (including HIP) grapple with the residues of racism and colonialism encoded into historical repertories, we think it timely to include questions about the socially exclusionary nature of musical professionalization. This two-day conference will present panels, practical workshops, and live performances questioning the effects of canonization and professionalization in modern Early Music performance and pedagogy.

Conference Co-Organizers: Elisabeth Le Guin, Marylin Winkle, Elizabeth Upton

Questions? Contact us: EarlyMusicConferenceUCLA2023@gmail.com

Presentation Abstracts
Presentation Abstracts
Presentation Abstracts

Schedule of Events

Day 1
Friday, November 17, 2023

Location for all Friday events: UCLA Music Library

1:30pm – Keynote Address
“The Authenticity Debates, 40 years later: Why is authenticity so important? When and why does it stop being so?” Elizabeth Upton, UCLA

3:00pm – Panel 1
“The State of Early Music”

  • “Historically-Informed Performance,” Inclusivity, and Egalitarianism in Practice in California Early Music Ensembles” Melva Colter, UCLA (REMOTE)
  •  “Proto-marxist reflections on musical amateurism in the European tradition” Elisabeth Le Guin, UCLA
  •  “Versatility and Range as Historical Practice: A Personal Narrative of Disability and a Reflection on the Over-Professionalization of Historically Informed Performance” Diego Loukota, UCLA
  •  “Keeping Early Music Relevant in our Schools and Community” Nicole Baker, CSUF, Respondent: Jan Hower, Long Beach Camerata Singers

5:00pm – Roundtable
“Curricular & performance goals in an age of shrinking budgets and increasing social consciousness”
Panel Chair: Derek Tam, SFEMS

  • Participants:  David McCormick, Early Music America (REMOTE); Bruce Teter, SCEMS; Ellen Lozada, UCLA undergraduate music major; IDEA Taskforce representative

6:15pm – Refreshment Break

6:30pm – Interactive Performance by Valencia Baryton Project

Day 2
Saturday, November 18, 2023

9:00am – Workshop
“Calibrating Time, Space, and Position: a Movement Workshop”
Linda Tomko, UCR

Workshop Location: Kaufman Hall, Crystal Room *This is a no-shoes studio.  Please bring socks to wear, or plan to go barefoot.*

11am – Panel 2
“Making Space: How Performance Choices Impact Who’s Included”
Panel Chair: Danielle Stein

Location: UCLA Music Library

  • “Commanding the Passions: Embodiment and Pedagogical Freedom in Historical Acting Techniques” Eleanor Legault (REMOTE)
  • “To Make More Folks Dig It, Sing It Like They Sang It” Jesse Rodin, Stanford
  • “The amateur-driven industry of musette and vielle à roue in Baroque France” Bruce Teter, SCEMS
  • “Upending the Notion of Performance and Fostering Community Exploration: Riffing on the Early Modern Salon” Lindsay Johnson, UMBC

1:00pm – Lunch Break (catered)

2:00pm – Panel 3
“Unseating the Canon”
Panel Chair: Marylin Winkle
Location: UCLA Music Library

  • “Teaching Musical Time in Isabella d’Este’s Music Room and Christine de Pizan’s Poem Dueil angoisseus” Rotem Gilbert, USC
  • “The Virgin Mary’s Essence in New Spanish Song, or a Collaborative 21st-Century Critical Edition” Cesar Favila & Paul Feller
  • “Do the dead have rights? Toward a theory of temporal difference” Luka Douridas, UCLA
  • “Recording Music and Historical Texts at Mission San Gabriel: A Beginner’s Perspective”→ Transition to WORKSHOP: “Exploring “Historical” Improvisation as Living Tradition/s” Adam Knight Gilbert (USC) with Alejandro Acosta (USC) and Federico Zúñiga

*Please bring instruments at A=440 to participate in the improvisation workshop.

4:15pm – Coffee Break

4:30pm – Workshop
Medieval Music By Ear
Niccolo Seligman

Location: Ensemble Room, Everlyn & Mo Ostin Music Center
*Please bring instruments at A=440 to participate in the workshop.

5:30pm – Roundtable
Creative Examples by Local Ensembles
Panel Chair: Henry Lebedinsky, Agave Baroque
Featuring contributions by conference presenters and other local performing arts organizations

Location: UCLA Music Library

6:30pm – Dinner Break (catered)

8:00 PM – Performance with Pre-Concert Lecture
“Alessandro Scarlatti’s Il martirio di Sant’Orsola with Baroque Gesture as Historical Sign Language”
UCLA EME, feat. Marisa de Silva and Loyola Marymount University singers

Location: Ensemble Room, Evelyn & Mo Ostin Music Center

Location & Parking

Campus Map (Schoenberg Hall)
Campus Map (Schoenberg Hall)
Campus Map (Schoenberg Hall)

Self-service parking is available at UCLA’s Parking Structure #2 for events in Schoenberg Music Building. Costs range from $1 for 20 minutes to $15 all day. Learn more about campus parking.

Conference Registration is Open
Click Here to Register

Call for Proposals

Conference Description

This two-day, multi-modal conference will bring together scholars, performers, community members, and the general public to wrestle with questions pertaining to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the pedagogy and performance of Early Music.

A relentless focus on professionalized standards in University-level music-making silently reinforces the legacies of racism, sexism and colonialism entangled in the histories of Classical music. We contend that thoughtful attention to historical repertories within a broad-based, collaborative, amateur-friendly pedagogy can encourage us—performers and audiences alike—to confront these legacies in new and potentially transformative ways.

We mean to offer a range of theoretical and practical events concerned with inclusive approaches to the performance of historical repertories, organized around three subthemes:

(1) “Unseating the Canon: What do Early Music Studies Have to Contribute Toward More Inclusive Music Studies?”

(2) “Curricular Models: Alternatives to Over-Professionalization”

(3) “What Can the Future Hold?”

Submission Guidelines

While the term “Early Music” still tends to connote Western European and colonial Church and Court repertories from Antiquity to about 1800, we are open to creative re-visionings of this geography and chronology.  Proposals can include traditional paper presentations, practical workshops, interactive performances, or other activities for engagement.

Submissions can engage in historically informed performance practices that are not limited to the performance of composed music, including improvisation and movement (dance, gesture, theatre, etc.). Musicians from the UCLA Early Music Ensemble will be on site to perform musical examples as needed to support activities.

We welcome proposals from all people, in and outside of the academy.

Please send an abstract (not more than 250 words) of your proposal by email to EarlyMusicConferenceUCLA2023@gmail.com. Please use the subject line “HIP to HIP Proposal.”

The submission period is closed.