📅&Բ;Date: Friday, February 28, 2025
🕒&Բ;Start Time: 4:00 PM
📍&Բ;Location: Harkness Chapel, Classroom
👥&Բ;Who: Free – open to the public
Our weekly Friday afternoon colloquia feature current research presentations by distinguished visiting scholars, as well as by our own faculty and graduate students in musicology, historical performance practice, and music education.
Following each session, receptions offer a valuable opportunity for social interaction, helping to foster a strong sense of community, camaraderie, and mutual support within the department.
About the Talk
"Thinking with the Hand: Marie Jaëll’s Intersections Between Physical Technique and Metaphysical Theology"
Marie Jaëll (1846-1925), a French pianist, pedagogue and composer, proposed that one should “think with the hand” to allow for a “decentralization of thought” when playing the piano (L'intelligence et le rythme dans les mouvements artistiques, 1904). How might pianistic techniques enable cognitive processes to be distributed across the brain and hands? In Jaëll’s solo piano suite Dix-huit pièces d'après une lecture de Dante (1894), I suggest that pianistic gestures express spiritual concepts. The first set, “Ce qu’on entend dans le purgatoire,” indicates that certain notes are to be played initially by the right hand and then silently transferred to－and sustained by－the left hand. I interpret these long-held pitches as an embodied allegory of Purgatorial theology: the hands cling to previously struck keys as the penitent soul dwells upon bygone life. The second set, entitled “Ce qu’on entend dans le paradis,” warns against tempo fluctuations and requires finger independence to achieve rhythmic evenness. Its steady tempo, combined with consonant diatonic harmony, may be heard as symbolizing timeless eternity in Heaven. I conclude that resonances between physical technique and metaphysical theology emerge from Jaëll’s work.
About the Speaker
Tekla Babyak holds a PhD in Musicology from Cornell University. Based in Davis, California, she is an independent scholar and disability activist with multiple sclerosis. Her research focuses on temporality, aesthetics, disability studies, and subjectivity in European musical Romanticism. Recent publications have appeared in the journals 19th-Century Music and Nineteenth-Century Music Review, and in edited collections such as Rethinking Brahms and. She serves on the Society for Music Theory’s Committee on Disability and Accessibility.
Accommodation Statement from Dr. Babyak: "I am a disabled scholar-activist with multiple sclerosis and an anxiety disorder. I respectfully request the following from colleagues and students: patience, a supportive attitude, a non-aggressive conversational environment, and maximal collegiality in discussion / interaction."
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