Music Postgraduate Profiles
A Selection of Postgraduate students
Carmen Chan, PhD student
Supervisors: Dr Thomas Reiner, Dr Catherine Schieve
I have commenced a research project looking at how unconventional notation acts as a guide to improvisation. This originated from my experience as a performer in percussion, which eventually led to score-making and, in a broader sense, composition.
After almost ten years combined at the University of Melbourne and Musikhögskolan i Piteå, plus having a break and a daughter, I chose to study at Monash because of the flexibility it offers at this stage of my life. I have found the environment supportive and open, and I am looking forward to the discoveries and challenges of my journey.
Katrina Dowling, MA student
Supervisors: Associate Professor Craig De Wilde, Dr Thomas Reiner
I am studying the music of English composers Gordon Jacob, Edmund Rubbra, Malcolm Arnold, Lennox Berkeley, Arnold Cooke and Alan Ridout. My research seeks to identify the points of stylistic correspondence between the six composers’ music for recorder and keyboards, composed between 1939 and 1989.
Coming to postgraduate research in music analysis after completing a Bachelors Degree in Performance and Honours in Music Sociology, I might be a musical jack-of-all-trades — but it is the diversity of fields within music that makes it so fascinating.
I would like to explore them all! I enjoy the School of Music-Conservatorium’s comprehensive approach to musicianship. Performance, composition and analysis, music history, sociology and ethnomusicology are integrated at the undergraduate level and inform each other at the postgraduate level. It is a rich and creative atmosphere.
Jane Hammond, PhD student
Supervisor: Dr Thomas Reiner
I completed my Masters by Research in music composition at Monash in 2007. My research focused on the possibilities of text generating music and took the form of a folio of original compositions — a trio for violin, clarinet and piano; a guitar trio; a number of songs for voice and piano; a solo piano work and a large choral piece for SATB choir, piano and CD. The folio was accompanied by an explanatory exegesis. Some of the vocal works in this folio became part of a larger original music theatre work that was produced at the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne in late 2007 called Voicing Emily.
During my Masters candidature I was assisted with two travel grants from the Arts Faculty at Monash. One enabled me to participate as a guest composer at the Sixth Shell Darwin International Guitar Festival and the other to make field recordings for my choral composition. During my candidature I was very appreciative of the opportunity to have my choral work performed by the Monash School of Music choir.
I am now in the very early stages of the PhD journey, working towards creating a folio of original music compositions that will focus on experimental music theatre and opera. The Music School and the wider Monash community continue to provide me with opportunities and the stimulus to further hone my compositional and research skills.
The self-reflection that necessarily comes with practice-based research has benefited my compositional skills and my capacity to be articulate and engaged with my own, and others’ creative practice.
Kerrin Hancock, PhD student
Supervisors: Professor Margaret Kartomi, Dr Graeme Smith
After initially completing a Master of Music Studies (Musicology) degree at Monash, I have for the past two years been a PhD candidate in Ethnomusicology in the School of Music. My research interest is migration, musical transplantation and cultural change and my thesis investigates the transplantation, reception and responses in Australia (Melbourne) of the choral synagogue music of South African Jews.
This is a somewhat controversial music custom in Melbourne because of its unfamiliarity to Australian Jews. For me, it is a rewarding project as I am one of very few people in the world engaged in studying and documenting this particular Jewish music.
Giving conference papers is an important part of PhD research and I was privileged to travel to North America in October 2007 where I delivered a paper at the international conference of the Society for Ethnomusicology. In 2009, I will be going to South Africa to conduct fieldwork in Johannesburg, before travelling on to Israel for further research in Jerusalem.
The highlight of my PhD experience is the outstanding supervision available in the School of Music. My principal and associate supervisors are both internationally reputed academics and scholars from whom I receive disciplined and rigorous training, continuing inspiration and much encouragement.
I am definitely in the right place at the right time.
Lauren Rubin, PhD student, resident in the United States
Supervisors: Professor Margaret Kartomi, Dr Made Hood
My thesis concerns the didjeridu and the shakuhachi (a Japanese bamboo end-blown flute). As an external Monash PhD student, I have been able to study these instruments in ways that would never have been available to me otherwise. In fact, Monash offered the only external PhD program in Ethnomusicology that made it possible for me, living in a smaller United States city, to be able to study at an international level.
I have had phenomenal fieldwork experiences, travelling to Aboriginal land on the Gove Peninsula in North Arnhem Land to study the didjeridu in its indigenous home, and studying the shakuhachi with masters in the beautiful city of Kyoto, Japan.
Monash’s research format for the PhD is ideal for my focus and interests, and my supervisors have been extremely helpful in giving me guidance as well as providing connections to other people in the field I would never be able to meet otherwise.
I am thoroughly enjoying Monash’s Ethnomusicology research PhD, whose rigorous standards require me to hone my intellectual abilities and also provide opportunities for one of a kind fieldwork experiences that I will treasure throughout my life.
As part of my commitment as a scholar to ‘Applied Ethnomusicology’, which encourages researchers to become actively involved in promoting the well-being of the communities they study, I, along with my husband, A CEO of a not-for-profit organisation, have teamed up with his staff to provide practical financial and material support to our adopted community in Arnhem Land. We have now created a monthly program to purchase art created by our adopted family to support their business.
Monash Memo, 27 May 2009 — 60 seconds with ... Lauren Rubin
Michael Spicer, PhD student
Supervisors: Dr Thomas Reiner, Associate Professor Craig De Wilde
I am an external PhD composition student, living and working in Singapore. I have a mixed background, having a conventional music education and extensive professional experience in popular music, but with a strong interest in experimental electronic and computer music. In addition, I also have a computer science background, and have worked as a software developer.
My PhD consists of building a folio of electroacoustic compositions, working with a mixture of interactive computer software and acoustic instruments. Most of my work combines elements of constrained improvisation, and interactive performance systems. These systems, written using the ChucK programming language, create an ensemble of virtual improvisers, implemented as autonomous agents.
My time at Monash has been a very stimulating experience. I have found that working with the Monash faculty has spurred me on to another phase of growth. My basic assumptions have been challenged (again), and I am encouraged to step out of my comfort zone and to revaluate my position as a person straddling the divide between popular music and art music.
Julie Waters, PhD student
Supervisors: Dr Joel Crotty, Professor Margaret Kartomi
My thesis focuses on the ideas and first three symphonies of the twentieth-century British composer Alan Bush. It examines the extent to which political and ideological factors — particularly Bush’s Marxist beliefs — impacted on the symphonies’ genesis, musical language and early British reception.
So far, my research has led to two field trips to the United Kingdom where I’ve worked in archives in the British Library, Cambridge and Caversham (the BBC Written Archive).
On my last trip home I received some strange looks as I boarded the plane, refusing to let my precious cargo out of sight. This included a very bulky parcel containing a copy of the score of Bush’s monumental unpublished third symphony, the ‘Byron’. One of the most gratifying aspects of my project has been discovering the generosity of the international research community.
The scholars and musicians who responded to my emails have exchanged ideas with me, given me materials that are difficult to access from Australia, and in some cases welcomed me into their homes.
Overall, with the support of the School of Music, my PhD has been an immensely rewarding journey of discovery into the ideas, music and milieu of a most complex musical personality.
Greg Wernert, MA student
Supervisors: Dr Thomas Reiner, Associate Professor Craig De Wilde, Peter McIlwain
My research focuses on exploring the musical expression of emotion with specific reference to the setting of poetic texts. The various writings on music and emotion provide the conceptual basis for my compositional work. My original music draws on a wide range of sources, including birdsong, poems by the twentieth-century Spanish poet F.G. Lorca, and a one-act play of the modernist Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello. One of the most exciting outcomes of undertaking research in music composition was the public performance of two of my pieces based on the Lorca poems. Reflecting on my studies here at Monash’s School of Music, I realise I have acquired a solid knowledge of music theory, a deeper understanding of the link between emotion and music, and an insight into musical materials that may elicit an emotional response in the listener.