Christine Lucia | Stellenbosch University (original) (raw)

Papers by Christine Lucia

SAMUS: South African Journal of Musicology 25 (1), 83-108., 2005

The South African National Research Foundation (NRF) like other bodies concerned with research in... more The South African National Research Foundation (NRF) like other bodies concerned with research internationally, has found itself under pressure to recognise creative work as research. Composers and performers from the South African Higher Education (HE) sector became part of this international lobby as they began applying to the NRF for rating as researchers. Tessa Marcus (former head of the NRF) thus asked me in 2005 to research preliminary guidelines for evaluating composers, performers, and their outputs. 2 This brought several strands of experience in my own career in HE together: as concert pianist in the 1970s and '80s especially in Durban (where inter alia I played new work by Volans, Bräuninger, and Süsse), as researcher on composers as different as Schumann, Volans, Ibrahim, and Mohapeloa, as media critic and editor, and (even) as composer-in the 1970s in Grahamstown I wrote incidental music for some Rhodes Theatre productions. Having worked for four university administrations over thirty years (Durban-Westville, Natal, Rhodes, and Witwatersrand) I had followed the emerging debate on equivalence between musical work and research with interest and concern. My position in undertaking the present research, then, was that of an individual insider offering 'outsiders' at the NRF a preliminary perspective on what composers and performers do, how they see themselves, what they think of research equivalence, and how they relate to the larger musical world(s) they are affiliated to, in order to put music more securely onto the agenda of the NRF. This article remains the perspective of one person, however much I have tried to represent others' views here. The present research was based largely on interviews conducted between April and September 2005, embedded in other forms of documentary research. I gave a preliminary report-back to the NRF on 16 September 2005 and revised my report with less emphasis on equivalence and more on explaining what composers and performers do and the public(s) they address (at the NRF's request). I sent my final report to the NRF in April 2006, but this is only a preliminary guideline, adding to a wider debate at the NRF that also involves practitioners in drama, fine art and other creative arts areas of HE. ________________________ 1 I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the NRF in this research and Tessa Marcus's interest and encouragement. The word 'performance' as used here implies classical performer and jazz musician who is a performer-composer. The word 'composition' implies 'art music composer' (as defined for example by Martin Scherzinger (2004)) as well as jazz composer-performer. This is a regrettable limitation, but is one necessarily imposed, partly by the small scale of this research but also by the reality of employment practices in South African Music HE, where there are almost no full-time personnel in African or Indian music performance for example. The notion of composer does not include personnel employed in Music HE who teach only music technology. ________________________ 3 The Appendix to this article shows numbers of performers, composers, and researchers in each of the fifteen HE 'music' institutions. My findings cannot assume to be a reading of the situation for all the practitioners in this field, however, for music, like other fields, produces extremes: the rarefied specialist who has an internationally significant outcome every two or three years, and the all-rounder who performs and composes regularly and produces occasional scholarly publications. 4 These would include for example histories of the following driving forces behind contemporary music: UCT Contemporary Music Society in the 1970s and '80s, the New Music Network (Johannesburg late '70s and early '80s), Soundwaves (Durban 1980s), Obelisk (Pretoria 1980s-'90s), NewMusicSA (Grahamstown and Johannesburg late'90s to 2006), Kemus (Stellenbosch University 1980s-present), the Composers' Guild (late 1980s and the International Society for Contemporary Music in two periods of its existence-the 1940s-'50s and the 1990s-2000s (see Blake 2006); and it would include histories of numerous concert societies that go back far longer than new music societies and often operate(d) in a more country-wide way, networking with each other to present South African or international artists in concerts of solo, chamber, orchestral, or choral music. Examples of the latter are Cape Town Concerts (founded by Hans Kramer) and the Johannesburg Music Society (founded by Hans Adler). The last two names point to another topic completely untouched in this research: the sustaining of a European notion of musical life by a small but highly significant immigrant minority. 5 When the NRF has finalised its criteria my Report may be publicly accessible; at present it is still an in-house NRF document. 6 I was enormously helped in this project by my research assistant, Alison Gerricke. 7 These include the websites of a number of universities worldwide and important documents such as the Strand Report (Strand 1998) and responses to it in, for example, the Australian Creative Arts Review.

Composing Apartheid: Essays of the Music of Apartheid, edited by Grant Olwage, Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 11-34., 2008

After listening to the strangely familiar yet unfamiliar language of the music, my colleague comm... more After listening to the strangely familiar yet unfamiliar language of the music, my colleague commented, 'it's postmodern'. It seemed to have arrived at a state of postmodernism without having been through European modernism, eschewing reference to art music of the early twentieth century (Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartók) and ignoring serial or post-serial techniques. What it lacked most conspicuously, however, made it what it was. It rearranged the codes and conventions from an earlier tonal era but projected them onto a flatter surface. Hence it sounded, to a colleague schooled in contemporary art but not music theory or composition, postmodern. The codes this piece did employ belong to a substantial history and repertoire of written black South African choral music, but one transmitted half-orally because scores are scarce and choirs taught mainly by rote (see Lucia, 2005: xxvi). This is a tradition going back more than 125 years, with John Knox Bokwe (1855-1922) usually seen as colonial founding father

Critical Arts: A Journal of South-North Cultural Studies, 21(1), 166-189. , 2007

African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music 10(3), 23-44., 2017

In 1937, the Se(Sotho) composer, Mohapeloa published 'Coronation Song' a short a cappella choral ... more In 1937, the Se(Sotho) composer, Mohapeloa published 'Coronation Song' a short a cappella choral work that celebrates the coronation of King George VI and which is ostensibly rooted in his colonial experience of the British Protectorate of Basutoland. It was reprinted in Morija in 1939 as 'Coronation March' , by which time it was clear that this song's political message was at odds with his other songs. Reprinted in 1945, 55, 66, and 80 with minor changes, the song becomes increasingly anachronistic. Mohapeloa suddenly rewrote it in the mid 1970s, 10 years after Lesotho gained independence, by transforming it into a patriotic song, 'Lesotho Our Heritage' ('Lesotho Lefa la Rōna'). This article traces the song's journey through decades of political change by means of a close hermeneutic reading of its text, musical language and structure, arguing that the music had always identified with two political tendencies, the one European and colonizing, the other American and decolonizing. It was this ambiguity that kept Mohapeloa's interest and led to his last version of the song, finally published only in 2015.

Unsettling Whiteness, edited by Samantha Schulz and Lucy Michaels, 219-30. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press e-Book, 2014

One of the criticisms levelled against Antjie Krog's account of race relations in southern Africa... more One of the criticisms levelled against Antjie Krog's account of race relations in southern Africa, Begging to Be Black is that she 'approaches blackness and whiteness from a literary standpoint.' 1 But it is precisely as a writer that Krog can do so: it is 'while writing-writingly, as it were,' she says, 'I find myself dissolving into, becoming towards what I am trying to understand.' 2 This chapter acknowledges the agency of writing, here, to be an act of dissolving into or 'becoming towards' racial otherness and applies it to the act of composing music, specifically to Lesotho-born Joshua Pulumo Mohapeloa (1908-1982) and his act of composing choral music. Rather than composing towards blackness, the chapter argues, during the course of a long career Mohapeloa composed towards, and then against, whiteness. Mohapeloa's colonial education introduced him to various musical examples of whiteness and of the 'white rules' of harmony and counterpoint encoded therein, which his own compositions could 'dissolve into' through mimesis or by parodying or inverting their codes. Even while composing towards the musical whiteness that he was trying to perfect, however, Mohapeloa questioned it, acknowledging the legacy of African norms he had inherited. Two or three audio examples will illustrate how his music reflects these acts of composing towards or against whiteness, interspersed with extracts from his own writings about them. The music's and composer's historically-situated, autotelic qualities are then pitted against two tenacious criticisms of African choral music: one a negative, mostly institutional critique from a position of white power, where 'whiteness is equated to modernity and Westernness, and blackness to backwardness;' 3 the other an ambivalent community criticism in which whiteness is sometimes-but not always-see as a betrayal of blackness.

African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music 9 No. 1: 56-86, 2011

Towards an African Pianism: Keyboard Music of Africa and the Diaspora, edited by Cynthia Tse Kimberlin and Akin C.T. Euba, California: MRI Press, 53-66., 2004

Musicus, 2009

Abstract: Abdullah Ibrahim was born Adolph Johannes Brand on 9 October 1934 in Kensington, Cape T... more Abstract: Abdullah Ibrahim was born Adolph Johannes Brand on 9 October 1934 in Kensington, Cape Town. Ibrahim's mother, Rachel, was from a coloured family; his father, Sentso, was Sotho. His grandparents gave him their surname so he could be classified as ...

British journal of ethnomusicology, 2002

... Changes occurred in Ibrahim's style from the late sixties to late seventies, and... more ... Changes occurred in Ibrahim's style from the late sixties to late seventies, and without wishing to draw a simplistic parallel between "life" and "works", there is clearly a connection between these changes and his unset-tled life at that ... Thus, as recently as 2001, Maya Jaggi wrote: ...

Critical Arts, Jul 1, 2007

In this article I address the problem of locating 'music theory' within contemporary critical the... more In this article I address the problem of locating 'music theory' within contemporary critical theories in the social sciences and humanities. I show how two kinds of music theory can be distinguished: music theory as an interpretative and 'critical' set of theories used mainly in music analysis, and theory of music as an 'uncritical' set of practical tools for both composition and analysis. I trace the origins of such theories and the separation between the two, and argue that theory of music as a prerequisite for practice comes from a notion of theory inculcated by music pedagogy in the nineteenth century, entrenched through the external examinations of London-based conservatoires. I show how the ethos of such examinations became lodged in the musical consciousness of South Africans as one of many colonial traces, but I argue that, unlike other aspects of colonialism, theory of music did not become adapted in the process of colonization, but has remained something of an anomaly in music teaching and practice. Especially, it has remained a different kind of 'theory' in critical discourse in the social sciences and humanities. Music theory in South Africa, too, has not undergone the kind of transforming process as other 'critical' theories have although it has far more possibilities for critique, but has remained a somewhat limited tool for music analysis in South African scholarship.

Musicus, 2004

When we celebrate the 70th birthday of a key figure in South African music such as Abdullah Ibrah... more When we celebrate the 70th birthday of a key figure in South African music such as Abdullah Ibrahim (born 9 October 1934 in Kensington, Cape Town), we are effectively remembering 70 years of South African history. Ibrahim's life and music is embedded in the culture of the country, inscribed on millions of lives and memories; and he can only be remembered in conjunction with other aspects of a collective South African past. This cannot deter, however, from the singular and monumental achievements of Ibrahim as an individual.

Musicus, 2009

Abstract: Composer Kevin Volans turns 60 on 26 July 2009. His profile overseas is unparalleled by... more Abstract: Composer Kevin Volans turns 60 on 26 July 2009. His profile overseas is unparalleled by that of any other South African-born composer, and here are a few reasons why. Volans has produced over 100 commissioned, published, performed works; his artistic collaborations ...

Please help us populate SUNScholar with the post print version of this article. It can be e-maile... more Please help us populate SUNScholar with the post print version of this article. It can be e-mailed to: scholar@sun.ac.zaLettere En WysbegeerteMusie

Please help us populate SUNScholar with the post print version of this article. It can be e-maile... more Please help us populate SUNScholar with the post print version of this article. It can be e-mailed to: scholar@sun.ac.zaLettere En WysbegeerteMusie

SAMUS: South African Journal of Musicology 25 (1), 83-108., 2005

The South African National Research Foundation (NRF) like other bodies concerned with research in... more The South African National Research Foundation (NRF) like other bodies concerned with research internationally, has found itself under pressure to recognise creative work as research. Composers and performers from the South African Higher Education (HE) sector became part of this international lobby as they began applying to the NRF for rating as researchers. Tessa Marcus (former head of the NRF) thus asked me in 2005 to research preliminary guidelines for evaluating composers, performers, and their outputs. 2 This brought several strands of experience in my own career in HE together: as concert pianist in the 1970s and '80s especially in Durban (where inter alia I played new work by Volans, Bräuninger, and Süsse), as researcher on composers as different as Schumann, Volans, Ibrahim, and Mohapeloa, as media critic and editor, and (even) as composer-in the 1970s in Grahamstown I wrote incidental music for some Rhodes Theatre productions. Having worked for four university administrations over thirty years (Durban-Westville, Natal, Rhodes, and Witwatersrand) I had followed the emerging debate on equivalence between musical work and research with interest and concern. My position in undertaking the present research, then, was that of an individual insider offering 'outsiders' at the NRF a preliminary perspective on what composers and performers do, how they see themselves, what they think of research equivalence, and how they relate to the larger musical world(s) they are affiliated to, in order to put music more securely onto the agenda of the NRF. This article remains the perspective of one person, however much I have tried to represent others' views here. The present research was based largely on interviews conducted between April and September 2005, embedded in other forms of documentary research. I gave a preliminary report-back to the NRF on 16 September 2005 and revised my report with less emphasis on equivalence and more on explaining what composers and performers do and the public(s) they address (at the NRF's request). I sent my final report to the NRF in April 2006, but this is only a preliminary guideline, adding to a wider debate at the NRF that also involves practitioners in drama, fine art and other creative arts areas of HE. ________________________ 1 I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the NRF in this research and Tessa Marcus's interest and encouragement. The word 'performance' as used here implies classical performer and jazz musician who is a performer-composer. The word 'composition' implies 'art music composer' (as defined for example by Martin Scherzinger (2004)) as well as jazz composer-performer. This is a regrettable limitation, but is one necessarily imposed, partly by the small scale of this research but also by the reality of employment practices in South African Music HE, where there are almost no full-time personnel in African or Indian music performance for example. The notion of composer does not include personnel employed in Music HE who teach only music technology. ________________________ 3 The Appendix to this article shows numbers of performers, composers, and researchers in each of the fifteen HE 'music' institutions. My findings cannot assume to be a reading of the situation for all the practitioners in this field, however, for music, like other fields, produces extremes: the rarefied specialist who has an internationally significant outcome every two or three years, and the all-rounder who performs and composes regularly and produces occasional scholarly publications. 4 These would include for example histories of the following driving forces behind contemporary music: UCT Contemporary Music Society in the 1970s and '80s, the New Music Network (Johannesburg late '70s and early '80s), Soundwaves (Durban 1980s), Obelisk (Pretoria 1980s-'90s), NewMusicSA (Grahamstown and Johannesburg late'90s to 2006), Kemus (Stellenbosch University 1980s-present), the Composers' Guild (late 1980s and the International Society for Contemporary Music in two periods of its existence-the 1940s-'50s and the 1990s-2000s (see Blake 2006); and it would include histories of numerous concert societies that go back far longer than new music societies and often operate(d) in a more country-wide way, networking with each other to present South African or international artists in concerts of solo, chamber, orchestral, or choral music. Examples of the latter are Cape Town Concerts (founded by Hans Kramer) and the Johannesburg Music Society (founded by Hans Adler). The last two names point to another topic completely untouched in this research: the sustaining of a European notion of musical life by a small but highly significant immigrant minority. 5 When the NRF has finalised its criteria my Report may be publicly accessible; at present it is still an in-house NRF document. 6 I was enormously helped in this project by my research assistant, Alison Gerricke. 7 These include the websites of a number of universities worldwide and important documents such as the Strand Report (Strand 1998) and responses to it in, for example, the Australian Creative Arts Review.

Composing Apartheid: Essays of the Music of Apartheid, edited by Grant Olwage, Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 11-34., 2008

After listening to the strangely familiar yet unfamiliar language of the music, my colleague comm... more After listening to the strangely familiar yet unfamiliar language of the music, my colleague commented, 'it's postmodern'. It seemed to have arrived at a state of postmodernism without having been through European modernism, eschewing reference to art music of the early twentieth century (Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartók) and ignoring serial or post-serial techniques. What it lacked most conspicuously, however, made it what it was. It rearranged the codes and conventions from an earlier tonal era but projected them onto a flatter surface. Hence it sounded, to a colleague schooled in contemporary art but not music theory or composition, postmodern. The codes this piece did employ belong to a substantial history and repertoire of written black South African choral music, but one transmitted half-orally because scores are scarce and choirs taught mainly by rote (see Lucia, 2005: xxvi). This is a tradition going back more than 125 years, with John Knox Bokwe (1855-1922) usually seen as colonial founding father

Critical Arts: A Journal of South-North Cultural Studies, 21(1), 166-189. , 2007

African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music 10(3), 23-44., 2017

In 1937, the Se(Sotho) composer, Mohapeloa published 'Coronation Song' a short a cappella choral ... more In 1937, the Se(Sotho) composer, Mohapeloa published 'Coronation Song' a short a cappella choral work that celebrates the coronation of King George VI and which is ostensibly rooted in his colonial experience of the British Protectorate of Basutoland. It was reprinted in Morija in 1939 as 'Coronation March' , by which time it was clear that this song's political message was at odds with his other songs. Reprinted in 1945, 55, 66, and 80 with minor changes, the song becomes increasingly anachronistic. Mohapeloa suddenly rewrote it in the mid 1970s, 10 years after Lesotho gained independence, by transforming it into a patriotic song, 'Lesotho Our Heritage' ('Lesotho Lefa la Rōna'). This article traces the song's journey through decades of political change by means of a close hermeneutic reading of its text, musical language and structure, arguing that the music had always identified with two political tendencies, the one European and colonizing, the other American and decolonizing. It was this ambiguity that kept Mohapeloa's interest and led to his last version of the song, finally published only in 2015.

Unsettling Whiteness, edited by Samantha Schulz and Lucy Michaels, 219-30. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press e-Book, 2014

One of the criticisms levelled against Antjie Krog's account of race relations in southern Africa... more One of the criticisms levelled against Antjie Krog's account of race relations in southern Africa, Begging to Be Black is that she 'approaches blackness and whiteness from a literary standpoint.' 1 But it is precisely as a writer that Krog can do so: it is 'while writing-writingly, as it were,' she says, 'I find myself dissolving into, becoming towards what I am trying to understand.' 2 This chapter acknowledges the agency of writing, here, to be an act of dissolving into or 'becoming towards' racial otherness and applies it to the act of composing music, specifically to Lesotho-born Joshua Pulumo Mohapeloa (1908-1982) and his act of composing choral music. Rather than composing towards blackness, the chapter argues, during the course of a long career Mohapeloa composed towards, and then against, whiteness. Mohapeloa's colonial education introduced him to various musical examples of whiteness and of the 'white rules' of harmony and counterpoint encoded therein, which his own compositions could 'dissolve into' through mimesis or by parodying or inverting their codes. Even while composing towards the musical whiteness that he was trying to perfect, however, Mohapeloa questioned it, acknowledging the legacy of African norms he had inherited. Two or three audio examples will illustrate how his music reflects these acts of composing towards or against whiteness, interspersed with extracts from his own writings about them. The music's and composer's historically-situated, autotelic qualities are then pitted against two tenacious criticisms of African choral music: one a negative, mostly institutional critique from a position of white power, where 'whiteness is equated to modernity and Westernness, and blackness to backwardness;' 3 the other an ambivalent community criticism in which whiteness is sometimes-but not always-see as a betrayal of blackness.

African Music: Journal of the International Library of African Music 9 No. 1: 56-86, 2011

Towards an African Pianism: Keyboard Music of Africa and the Diaspora, edited by Cynthia Tse Kimberlin and Akin C.T. Euba, California: MRI Press, 53-66., 2004

Musicus, 2009

Abstract: Abdullah Ibrahim was born Adolph Johannes Brand on 9 October 1934 in Kensington, Cape T... more Abstract: Abdullah Ibrahim was born Adolph Johannes Brand on 9 October 1934 in Kensington, Cape Town. Ibrahim's mother, Rachel, was from a coloured family; his father, Sentso, was Sotho. His grandparents gave him their surname so he could be classified as ...

British journal of ethnomusicology, 2002

... Changes occurred in Ibrahim's style from the late sixties to late seventies, and... more ... Changes occurred in Ibrahim's style from the late sixties to late seventies, and without wishing to draw a simplistic parallel between "life" and "works", there is clearly a connection between these changes and his unset-tled life at that ... Thus, as recently as 2001, Maya Jaggi wrote: ...

Critical Arts, Jul 1, 2007

In this article I address the problem of locating 'music theory' within contemporary critical the... more In this article I address the problem of locating 'music theory' within contemporary critical theories in the social sciences and humanities. I show how two kinds of music theory can be distinguished: music theory as an interpretative and 'critical' set of theories used mainly in music analysis, and theory of music as an 'uncritical' set of practical tools for both composition and analysis. I trace the origins of such theories and the separation between the two, and argue that theory of music as a prerequisite for practice comes from a notion of theory inculcated by music pedagogy in the nineteenth century, entrenched through the external examinations of London-based conservatoires. I show how the ethos of such examinations became lodged in the musical consciousness of South Africans as one of many colonial traces, but I argue that, unlike other aspects of colonialism, theory of music did not become adapted in the process of colonization, but has remained something of an anomaly in music teaching and practice. Especially, it has remained a different kind of 'theory' in critical discourse in the social sciences and humanities. Music theory in South Africa, too, has not undergone the kind of transforming process as other 'critical' theories have although it has far more possibilities for critique, but has remained a somewhat limited tool for music analysis in South African scholarship.

Musicus, 2004

When we celebrate the 70th birthday of a key figure in South African music such as Abdullah Ibrah... more When we celebrate the 70th birthday of a key figure in South African music such as Abdullah Ibrahim (born 9 October 1934 in Kensington, Cape Town), we are effectively remembering 70 years of South African history. Ibrahim's life and music is embedded in the culture of the country, inscribed on millions of lives and memories; and he can only be remembered in conjunction with other aspects of a collective South African past. This cannot deter, however, from the singular and monumental achievements of Ibrahim as an individual.

Musicus, 2009

Abstract: Composer Kevin Volans turns 60 on 26 July 2009. His profile overseas is unparalleled by... more Abstract: Composer Kevin Volans turns 60 on 26 July 2009. His profile overseas is unparalleled by that of any other South African-born composer, and here are a few reasons why. Volans has produced over 100 commissioned, published, performed works; his artistic collaborations ...

Please help us populate SUNScholar with the post print version of this article. It can be e-maile... more Please help us populate SUNScholar with the post print version of this article. It can be e-mailed to: scholar@sun.ac.zaLettere En WysbegeerteMusie

Please help us populate SUNScholar with the post print version of this article. It can be e-maile... more Please help us populate SUNScholar with the post print version of this article. It can be e-mailed to: scholar@sun.ac.zaLettere En WysbegeerteMusie