The Musicology Lecture Series presents Anna Gawboy, The Ohio State University, "Synesthesia Imagined, Synesthesia Revealed."
Musicology lectures are free and open to the public. All lectures are held Mondays at 4:30 p.m. in the Music/Dance Library (2nd floor, room 205) in the 18th Avenue Library at 175 West 18th Ave., unless otherwise noted.
Synesthesia is now technically defined as a neurological condition, but one hundred years ago the term described a large set of potentially overlapping scenarios involving multisensory interaction. Artists such as Arnold Schoenberg, Wassily Kandinsky, and Alexander Scriabin premised their work on multisensory correspondence in order to transcend ordinary subjectivity and endow their creations with spiritual significance. This presentation traces a history of the clinical discovery of synesthesia in the nineteenth century, its interpretations by theosophists and occultists, and subsequent disenchantment in twentieth-century neurology—and evaluates works of art that invoke synesthesia in light of their aims and reception.
Anna Gawboy’s research explores the intersection of music theory, cultural history, and musical performance. In 2010, she collaborated with the Yale Symphony Orchestra and lighting designer Justin Townsend to produce a new staging of Alexander Scriabin's Prometheus: Poem of Fire based on her dissertation research. She has presented papers at international, national and regional conferences, including the annual meetings of the Society for Music Theory, the American Musicological Society as well as Music Theory Midwest and the New England Conference of Music Theorists. Her article, "The Wheatstone Concertina and Symmetrical Arrangements of Tonal Space" appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of the Journal of Music Theory.
