NOTES:

All times are in ET

In-person attendees: all locations in Pratt Music Hall, unless indicated with an asterisk *

The symposium exhibition will be open during coffee, lunch, and reception breaks throughout the weekend 

Friday, November 22, 2024

11:00am-12:00noon

ACCESSIBILITY TOUR of Pratt Hall

Pratt lower lobby

12:00noon-1:15pm

CHECK-IN AND EXHIBITION

Pratt lower lobby and Music Library

1:15-1:30pm

OPENING REMARKS - conference organizers

Pratt 109

1:30-4:00pm

PAPER SESSION #1: Paradis at Work

Pratt 109

Session chair: Evan MacCarthy (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

  Evelyn Szabo (Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, Austria) - presenting online

  A red book in a wooden casket: The Stammbuch of Paradis - Insights into Her Vienna Network

  Sébastien Durand (Université de Tours, France) - presenting in person

A Blind Virtuoso in Paris during the Age of Enlightenment: Paradis at the Concert Spirituel (1784)

COFFEE SERVICE

Jamie Weaver (Stephen F. Austin State University, TX) - presenting online

Difficult to Read: A Study of Paradis’ Literacy and Communication with the Sighted World

Waltraud Maierhofer (University of Iowa) - presenting in person

Insight or Eyesight: Bourgeois Gender Roles, Disability, and Paradis, the Performer and Entrepreneur

4:00-4:15pm

COFFEE SERVICE

Pratt lower lobby

4:15-5:00pm

KEYNOTE #1: Selina Mills (London, England) - presenting online

Why Blindness Matters: Paradis and Blind Women in the Past

Pratt 109

Author and  broadcaster Selina Mills looks at definitions of blindness across the ages, and asks why these are important to our understanding of history, not to mention our views of blind women. 

5:00-5:30pm

RECEPTION

Pratt lower lobby

5:30-6:30pm

RECITAL: Fantasy and Ballad: The schweren Träumen of Maria Theresia Paradis and Her Contemporaries

Warbeke Recital Hall

The Fitz Gibbon - McCullough Duo -- Lucy Fitz Gibbon (soprano) and Ryan McCullough (fortepiano) -- perform Paradis’ Gothic ballad Lenore and other works by her and Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg.

6:30-8:00pm

DINNER BREAK

8:00-10:00pm

SCREENING: Licht (dir. Albert, 2017) 

* Gamble Auditorium, Art Museum

 Saturday, November 23, 2024

9:00-9:30am

COFFEE SERVICE

Pratt lower lobby

9:30am-12:00pm

PAPER SESSION #2: Technologies and Traces

Pratt 109

Session chair: Catrina Kim (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)

Stephanie Probst (Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst, Vienna, Austria) - presenting online

Notational Systems and Appliances for Blind Musicians: Approaches, Affordances, Positionalities

Hannah Thompson (Royal Holloway University of London, England) - presenting online

Blind Women Listening, Writing and Thinking in the Nineteenth Century

COFFEE SERVICE

Michael Accinno (West Tisbury, MA) - presenting in person

Toward a Music History of Braille: Tactile Literacy in the Long Nineteenth Century 

Christoph Siems and Solveig-Marie Oma (Leipzig, Germany) - presenting in person

On Retranslating Musical Scores: Blind Composing Then and Now

12:00-1:30pm

LUNCH BREAK

1:30-2:30pm

LECTURE-RECITAL: “I am the angel of sweet harmony”: Paradis between Fact and Fiction

Warbeke Recital Hall

Christopher Parton hosts a lecture-recital with Sherezade Panthaki (soprano), Allison Monroe (violin), and Jiayan Sun (fortepiano), featuring settings by Paradis, Vogler, and Kozeluch of a biographical poem about Paradis by the blind poet Pfeffel, and Schubert’s Lied Der blinde Knabe (D. 833).

2:30-2:45pm

COFFEE SERVICE

Pratt lower lobby

2:45-4:30pm

PAPER SESSION #3: Representations

Pratt 109

Session chair: Jessica Waldoff (College of the Holy Cross)

Annette Richards (Cornell University, NY) - presenting in person

Music on the Dark Side of 1800: Listening to Mlle Paradis

Kristin Franseen (Western University, Ontario, Canada) and Rena Roussin (University of Toronto, Canada) - presenting online and in person

Recovering Paradis?: Mythology, Gossip, and Anachronism in Fictional Reception History

Barbara Albert and Kathrin Resetartis (Vienna, Austria) - presenting online

Director and Screenwriter of Licht (2017) in Conversation with Christopher Parton

4:30-5:15pm

RECEPTION

Pratt lower lobby

5:15-6:00pm

KEYNOTE #2: Stefan Sunandan Honisch (University of British Columbia, Canada) - presenting online

Paradis Lost?: Talents, Misfortunes, Vulnerability, Virtuosity

Pratt 109

Honisch explores Paradis’ musical legacy in relation to the life and work of two blind women pianists who participated in the professional and amateur streams of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition: Judyth Walker (1973) and Debra Saylor (2005). Despite their historical distance from each other, Honisch considers how capitalist political economy catches the music-making and reception of Paradis, Walker, and Saylor within an adversarial aesthetic that objectifies sensory, physical, and cognitive ability.

6:00-8:00pm

DINNER BREAK

8:00-10:00pm

GRAND FINALE SCHULKONZERT     

McCulloch Recital Hall

The Mount Holyoke Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Singers, and selected faculty, students, alums, and friends perform a reconstruction of one of Paradis’ 1810s Vienna studio concerts -- featuring piano solos, duos, and instrumental and vocal chamber music by Paradis, Mozart, Wanhal, Fusz, and more; Paradis’ Overture to her Singspiel Der Schulkandidat; and the modern-day world premiere of an excerpt from her recently rediscovered cantata, Das Wiedersehen; all interspersed with excerpts from glowing accounts of these concerts in the German press.