Javier Rivas (King's College London)

Calls for academic change have been ubiquitous in recent decades, which has given rise to a number of initiatives that aim to address overlooked narratives and open academic spaces to marginalized voices. In institutions of higher music education, reform has often been slow and met with resistance by proponents and upholding structures of the conservatoire system. My doctoral research explores the case of the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (Catalonia School of Music, hereafter “Esmuc”), a music institution created with the specific purpose of providing an alternative model to the conservatoire system—a model that allows for different musical traditions and disciplines to coexist and come together. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research at the Esmuc, my research considers the teaching and managerial strategies deployed to encourage academic change. In particular, I direct attention toward those practices that are not always framed conceptually and linguistically in a music theory corpus, and that often “go without saying”. How willing are individuals to listen to other musical milieus? And to what extent are their listening practices conditioned by the physical and social environment of the school? Indeed, are students and teachers even able to listen? As I explore the everyday life of an institution in flux like the Esmuc, the aural emerges as a key aspect to understand the relationship between the actions of individuals and their social structures.