PUBLIC LECTURE: UWA School of Music presents: Free Lecture Recital

Free Lecture Recital

Presented in association with the Harp Society of WA

Jacinta Dennett: Illuminating Significative Utterance in Performance

In this presentation that relates to her PhD research, Jacinta Dennett will advocate the sonic and expressive qualities of the modern concert harp through the performance and recordings of selected solo repertoire for the instrument. Helen Gifford’s Fable (1967) for harp solo will provide the lens through which a deeper enquiry into performance is sought. The research process will involve a study of Helen Gifford’s oeuvre, its critical reception authenticated by performance reviews, published and archival documents, radio broadcasts and transcriptions of interviews, and interviews between the performer and the composer herself. Using Rudolf Steiner’s Philosophy of Freedom (1894), in particular his theory of ‘moral imagination,’ this path of investigation will lay hold of music performance as the focus for developing an epistemology after the model of a fable, where discovery is self-initiated rather than delivered. What insights (inner sight or wisdom), does a study of Helen Gifford’s Fable (1967) reveal?

Jacinta Dennett is Harp Tutor at Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and the Australian National Academy of Music