Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T07:50:11.301Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

IDENTITY AND THE ABSTRACT SELF IN CAT HOPE'S SPEECHLESS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2019

Kate B. Milligan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Cat Hope's compositional practice is guided by a belief that music is inherently socially situated and can therefore be used as a tool for change. Through her 2019 opera Speechless Hope contributes to public discourse around the treatment of detainees in Australian offshore processing centres and engages more broadly with issues of nationality, human rights, displacement and the agency of voiceless minorities. This article demonstrates the way in which Hope presents identity in abstraction and complicates the binary of the self and the collective through musical acts of empathy. In doing so, she pioneers a new model which affords composers the ability to present progressive social arguments, crucial to a global political climate in desperate need of a recalibrated perspective of identity.

Type
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Information
Tempo , Volume 73 , Issue 290 , October 2019 , pp. 13 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Small, Christopher, Musicking: The Means of Performing and Listening (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

2 For more information about Tura New Music, please visit the Tura website, www.tura.com.au/.

3 For more information about VitalStatistix, please visit the website, https://vitalstatistix.com.au/.

4 For more information about Perth Festival, please visit the Festival website, www.perthfestival.com.au/.

5 For more information about The Australian Bass Orchestra, please visit: www.cathope.com/Australian-bass-orchestra.html.

6 For more information about Decibel New Music Ensemble, and for information about the scrolling score software, please visit their website, www.decibelnewmusic.com/.

7 VitalStatistix, ‘Speechless Incubator Residency’, https://vitalstatistix.com.au/residencies/speechless/ (accessed 5 July 2019).

8 Cat Hope, ‘Preparing the premiere – developing the production design’, http://www.cathope.com/speechless/archives/02-2019, accessed 24 March 2019.

9 Cat Hope, ‘About Speechless’, http://speechlessdevelopment.tura.com.au/about/, accessed 17 April 2018.

10 Abbate, Carolyn, ‘Preface’, Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. ixCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Abbate, ‘Preface’, p. ix.

12 Cone, Edward T., The Composer's Voice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

13 Jennifer Trijo, ‘Speechless: A Wordless Opera’, on AussieTheatre.com, 19 August 2017, https://aussietheatre.com.au/blogs/cadenzanotes/speechlesswordlessopera, accessed 4 September 2018.

14 Aviva Endean, ‘Aviva’, interview by Deborah May, 28 July 2017, http://speechlessdevelopment.tura.com.au/2017/07/28/aviva/, accessed 31 August 2018.

15 Tristen Parr, ‘Tristen’, interview by Deborah May, 24 July 2017, http://speechlessdevelopment.tura.com.au/2017/07/24/tristen/, accessed 30 August 2018.

16 Cusick, Suzanne G., ‘Feminist Theory, Music Theory, and the Mind/Body Problem’, Perspectives of New Music 32/1 (1994), pp. 8–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Cusick, ‘Feminist Theory, Music Theory, and the Mind/Body Problem’, p. 16.

18 Cusick, ‘Feminist Theory, Music Theory, and the Mind/Body Problem’, p. 16.

19 Dan Thorpe, ‘Moving bodies’, interview by Deborah May, 27 July 2017, http://speechlessdevelopment.tura.com.au/2017/07/27/movingbodies, accessed 31 August 2018.

20 Hope, Cat, ‘Infrasonic Music’, in Leonardo Music Journal 19/1 (2009), p. 53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 For a comprehensive introduction to this topic, see Born, Georgina, ‘On Musical Mediation: Ontology, Technology and Creativity’, Twentieth Century Music 2/1 (2005), pp. 7–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Glăveanu, Vlad Petre, ‘Distributed Creativity: What Is It?’, in Distributed Creativity: Thinking Outside the Box of the Creative Individual (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2014), pp. 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Glăveanu, ‘Distributed Creativity: What Is It?’, p. 2.

24 Cat Hope, ‘Program Notes: Speechless by Cat Hope’, www.cathope.com/uploads/1/7/7/0/17709781/program_notes_a3_final.pdf, accessed 1 October 2018.

25 Parr, ‘Tristen’.

26 Endean, ‘Aviva’.

27 Sage Pbbbt, ‘Overtones’, interviewed by Deborah May, 27 July 2017, http://speechlessdevelopment.tura.com.au/2017/07/27/overtones/, accessed 30 August 2018.

28 Tina Havelock-Stevens, ‘Drum mistress’, interviewed by Deborah May, 24 July 2017, http://speechlessdevelopment.tura.com.au/2017/07/24/drummistress/, accessed 29 August 2018.