Music Colloquium Series 2/28: Tekla Babyak

Please join us on Friday, February 28, at 4:00 PM EST for the next installment in the CWRU Department of Music Colloquium Series. Dr. Tekla Babyak (Independent Scholar) will be presenting a talk entitled “Thinking with the Hand: Marie Jaëll’s Intersections Between Physical Technique and Metaphysical Theology.” This talk will take place on campus, in the Harkness classroom. For more about the series, please visit: https://case.edu/artsci/music/news-events/music-colloquium-series
RSVPs encouraged but not required.

ABOUT THE TALK:

Marie Jaëll (1846-1925), a French pianist, pedagogue and composer, proposed that one should “think with the hand” to allow for a “decentralization of thought” when playing the piano (L'intelligence et le rythme dans les mouvements artistiques, 1904). How might pianistic techniques enable cognitive processes to be distributed across the brain and hands? In Jaëll’s solo piano suite Dix-huit pièces d'après une lecture de Dante (1894), I suggest that pianistic gestures express spiritual concepts. The first set, “Ce qu’on entend dans le purgatoire,” indicates that certain notes are to be played initially by the right hand and then silently transferred to－and sustained by－the left hand. I interpret these long-held pitches as an embodied allegory of Purgatorial theology: the hands cling to previously struck keys as the penitent soul dwells upon bygone life. The second set, entitled “Ce qu’on entend dans le paradis,” warns against tempo fluctuations and requires finger independence to achieve rhythmic evenness. Its steady tempo, combined with consonant diatonic harmony, may be heard as symbolizing timeless eternity in Heaven. I conclude that resonances between physical technique and metaphysical theology emerge from Jaëll’s work.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Tekla Babyak holds a PhD in Musicology from Cornell University. Based in Davis, California, she is an independent scholar and disability activist with multiple sclerosis. Her research focuses on temporality, aesthetics, disability studies, and subjectivity in European musical Romanticism. Recent publications have appeared in the journals 19th-Century Music and Nineteenth-Century Music Review, and in edited collections such as Rethinking Brahms and Joseph Joachim: Identities/Identitäten. She serves on the Society for Music Theory’s Committee on Disability and Accessibility.

Accommodations Statement from Dr. Babyak: "I am a disabled scholar-activist with multiple sclerosis and an anxiety disorder. I respectfully request the following from colleagues and students: patience, a supportive attitude, a non-aggressive conversational environment, and maximal collegiality in discussion / interaction."

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