News

Baroque music research & performance earns Australia's first Doctor of Musical Arts

Media Release, Friday 23 August 2002

Aria Award winning musician Genevieve Lacey is to be awarded Australia's first Doctor of Musical Arts at a ceremony at the University of Melbourne this weekend.

Arguably Australia's leading recorder player, Ms Lacey is also artistic director of the Melbourne Autumn Music Festival.

The Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) is a professional doctorate offered by the Faculty of Music at the University and is the first music performance higher degree to be offered by any Australian university.

Known mostly for her recordings of baroque music, Ms Lacey made an advanced performance study of the recorder for the DMA, and wrote a thesis on contemporary attitudes to the performance of Baroque music.

In biographical and program notes Ms Lacey has been described as a musician whose "playing has real freedom and fantasy" (The Times, London), and a "recorder virtuoso with an ability to perform repertoire spanning seven centuries with commanding passion".

Ms Lacey was the most outstanding graduate from the Faculty of Music in 1994 and was rewarded with the prestigious Welsford Smithers Travelling Scholarship. She also won a Queen's Trust Fellowship that year, and travelled to Europe to study. At the acclaimed Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in Odense, Denmark, she graduated with a perfect score in the performance diploma and was immediately invited to join the teaching staff.

Ms Lacey has recorded several CD's, including the 2001 Aria Award winning Il flauto dolce for ABC Classics. Piracy, her latest recording with harpsichordist Linda Kent, has received excellent initial reviews. It is a collection of Baroque music "stolen" for the recorder.

What: First Australian graduate of Doctor of Musical Arts
Who: Recorder virtuoso, Genevieve Lacey
When: Saturday, 24 August 2001 from 2pm
Where: Melba Hall, Faculty of Music (2pm) Wilson Hall (3pm)

In her own words.....

Genevieve Lacey comments on an intellectual journey into the baroque sensibility

The research component of my PhD was about the attitudes of musicians working in the field of early music - ideas expressed by players and musicologists and people writing either within academia or music industry publications.

I aimed to identify and examine a range of contemporary attitudes to the performance of baroque music; to illuminate the links or gaps between reading, writing and making sound. I wanted to examine what might be influencing the way we think about, and hence play, baroque music. My idea was that the broad philosophical/aesthetic attitudes we have to history, text, criticism and performance shape the way that we reconstruct the music of the past. My dissertation was an attempt to place my artistic creed within a broader philosophical and aesthetic context, to identify its origins and influences, and to meet and respond to challenging views in order to provide one performer's insights into baroque music. I wanted to give voice to a performer's perceptions of baroque music and its place in the world today.

Writing this research project allowed me to clarify and articulate ideas essential to my work as a performer. As well as the thesis, there was a significant performance requirement for the degree. Completing a DMA was an excellent opportunity for me to conceive and develop three substantial performance concepts: two of the three required recital programmes subsequently became CD projects that have been released by ABC Classics. The third is scheduled to be recorded soon.

About the Doctor of Musical Arts

The Doctor of Musical Arts degree is a professional doctorate which is the apex of a degree hierarchy in music performance at the University of Melbourne. It is the first of its kind at any Australian tertiary institution.

The DMA offers candidates the opportunity to significantly advance musical interpretation and performance understanding in a chosen area. It takes 3 years full-time and combines coursework with advanced practical study and recitals, culminating in a doctoral thesis and major recital. It is intended primarily for established professional musicians.

The DMA provides the parallel avenue of study to the PhD for music performers, and offers a more appropriate degree structure for doctoral music performance study than the PhD. The degree is oriented to performers who are established professionally in their respective fields.

The degree program is characterised by advanced research and study of music performance supported by advanced academic research.

The degree is assessed through a combination of public performance and thesis.

More information: http://www.music.unimelb.edu.au/courses/grad07.html

About the Faculty of Music at the University of Melbourne

Founded in 1891, the Faculty is the oldest and one of the two largest music schools in Australia. It is a selective school with over 600 students, including over 60 graduate students, and over 100 specialist staff. Students are selected from all Australian states and 15% are from abroad, coming from over 20 countries. The Faculty offers a comprehensive array of courses in performance, composition, musicology, http://www.music.unimelb.edu.au/courses/therapy.htmlmusic therapy, music education, and an array of ways of combining music with other subjects. The research resources include the Centre for Studies in Australian Music, the National Music Therapy Research Unit, the Early Music Studio, and the Grainger Museum.

More information: http://www.music.unimelb.edu.au/