Férdia Stone-Davis

Dear Colleagues and Friends,



In this edition of the MCS Newsletter you will find information about our next Study Day and also our next Workshop, which will look at the role of music in right-wing extremism. In addition, there is a brief report from our last workshop, and an introduction to the newest member of the group. 


1. MCS Study Day, 25 April 2012


Our Study Days offer a chance to read and discuss relevant and recent literature on the topic of music and conflict. The Study Day is open to all, but for organisational reasons we ask you to register by sending a mail to mcs-info@uni-goettingen.de by Friday, 20 April. Further information on the texts to be discussed will be available from early April. The Study Day will be conducted in English.


2. Workshop “White-Power Music: Germany in the World”, June 2012


Our next workshop looks at the role of music in the rightwing-extremist scene. Though the focus is on Germany, the presence of several international scholars aims to provide an opportunity to discuss this issue in a larger, international context. More information will be provided in our next newsletter.

3. Report from the workshop “Music in the missionary activities of the Jesuits in Spanish and Portuguese America, 1540-1773”


This workshop took place on 20 January 2012 in the Department of Musicology, and feature a number of well-known researchers in this field. Prof. Franz Körndle (Universität Augsburg) gave a general introduction to music in Jesuit missionary work and its importance for the missions, while Prof. Jerzy Skrabania (Hochschule St. Augustin) explored this further using the example of the Chiquitos mission in what is now Bolivia - an area in which the influence of the Jesuits can be felt right up to the present day. Dr. Jutta Toelle (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) focussed on German-language missionary reports, which are characterised by a one-sided perspective on the music of the “pagans” and discussions of efforts of cultural education on the basis of the catechism. Finally, Prof. Marcos Holler (Universität Florianópolis) offered an insight into Jesuit missionary practice in Portuguese America, including the phenomenon of Portuguese oprhans being shipped to Bahía in order to inspire indigenous children of the merits of Christianity through music. 
The workshop offered an opportunity for interdisciplinary exchange with the result that all those who participated gained new perspectives, be they music-historical, missions-historical or sociomusicological in nature. The lively and debate that characterised the closing discussion demonstrated that the topic of music in colonial history, and in particular music in the foreign missions, needs to be pursued further with a view to better understanding the sociocultural conditions of “cultural transfer” as it was practised, sometimes very consciously, in the era of European expansionism. A further forum for such discussions will be offered by the 15th International Congress of the Gesellschaft für Musikforschung, which will take place in September of this year in Göttingen: several of the workshop participants will return to Göttingen for a symposium entitled “The Journeys of Music” to be organised by MCS researcher Christian Storch.


4. New member of the Research Group


In January of this year we welcomed Dr. Férdia Stone-Davis as the newest member of the Research Group. Férdia conducted her undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Cambridge and also studied recorder performance at Trinity College of Music. She will be responsible for the editiorial coordination of the MCS book series and will also conduct research into the music of the Jacobite movement in the 18th century, with a special focus on English Jacobites.

Further information on the research group can be found on our Website:
Research Group “Music, Conflict and the State” Homepage



Best wishes,


The Research Group “Music, Conflict and the State”

This morning I was sent a parcel by Dan (and the cats). Some of its contents were expected, including a book and audio to ‘perfect’ my German (I’ll let you know how this goes!) The real treat, though, was the unexpected inclusion of Letters to A Young Poet by Rilke. Now, I know that I said I wouldn’t be quoting any more Rilke but I flipped the book open and the following text jumped out at me:

To be an artist is this: not to count or to reckon: to ripen like a tree which does not force its sap, but in the storms of spring stands confident without being afraid that afterwards no summer may come. The summer comes all right. But it only comes to the patient, to those who are there as carefree and quiet and immense, as if eternity lay before them. Daily I learn, learn it through my sufferings (to which I am grateful) that patience is everything. 

It is now two weeks ago today that I arrived in Göttingen. You may be pleased to know that I won’t be quoting any more Rilke! Whilst I am still struggling with being here, I feel a little better. I have at last signed my contract and have keys to my office! I have bought a couple of plants for my home and office space so that they feel a little more like mine and am still in love with the organic supermarket, which is vegan heaven.

In terms of the academic experience here, the Music, Conflict and State Research Group is very welcoming and supportive. I now have more of an idea of the timeline of tasks which lie ahead for me relating to the group and I am in the process of placing my own research and performance goals alongside these. Needless to say, it is going to be a busy two years! 

Other than the research group, I have listened to musicological papers in German and understood at least a few words and have also experienced the German equivalent of clapping after seminar papers, a collective rapping of knuckles on the table, which I love!

Today I went to a seminar at the Zentrum für Theorie und Methodik der Kulturwissenschaften on ‘Wikis and Participatory Fandom’ with Prof. Dr. Jason Mittell. A very interesting paper and wonderful discussion, including the discursive and multi-authored nature of Wikipedia and its relationship to knowledge. A link to the paper found by following this link and scrolling down: http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/90723.html 

A week ago today I landed. I felt fairly bleak for most of the first few days, assisted by the fact that I was offline and completely out of touch. In that frame of mind it was perhaps not a great idea to start reading Rilke’s Elegies (in English, of course). However, I wanted to share with you a little of the first:

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the ranks/of the angels? Even if one of them clasped me/suddenly to his heart, I’d wither in the face/of his more fierce existence. For their beauty/is really nothing but the first stirrings of a terror/we are just able to endure and are astonished/at the way it elects, with such careless disdain, to let us go on living. Every angel is terrifying.

So, I hold back - I swallow back the bird-call/of black grief that would burst from me./Ah, who is it we can turn to for help? Not angels./Not other people. Even the knowing creatures/already dumbly see we do not feel at home/in our interpretations of the world, though there is,/ perhaps a specific tree on a hillside we settle on/over and over. Or yesterday’s stroll remains,/through the usual streets - the comforting loyalty/of a habit that took a liking to us,/that moved in and now will not leave us alone.

Transplanted somewhere new, unfamiliarity brings feelings of estrangement. Yet, gradually, small things provide landmarks and give rise to the barest traces of familiarity. These anchor both the physical and the emotional.