Live music is dead! Long live live music!

Professor Simon Emmerson, Professor from the Faculty of Humanities at De Montfort University gives his inaugural lecture.

What is ‘live’ about music in the age of the internet? Most of the music we hear is coming to us from loudspeakers, wherever it originated, however it was made. Over the last sixty years technology has apparently ‘invaded’ music in all its forms. Professor Simon Emmerson argues that with the right approach this can be seen as ‘humanising the technology’ and not the reverse. Technology may expand what music means, potentially leading us to deeper and richer experiences of the world, helping the world (and maybe beyond) to become a musical instrument.

Professor Simon Emmerson studied sciences at Cambridge before convincing his tutors he wanted to switch to music (through music education studies). He taught physics and music in a secondary school before gaining a PhD Studentship in Electronic Music at City University where he worked through to becoming professor. He is now Professor of Music, Technology and Innovation at De Montfort University. He has always composed with electronics, usually with instruments or voices and has two recent solo CDs on the Sargasso label. He has contributed to and edited The Language of Electroacoustic Music (Macmillan, 1986, still in print), Music, Electronic Media and Culture (Ashgate, 2000) and Living Electronic Music (Ashgate, 2007). He is on the Board of ‘Sound and Music’ the successor organisation to Sonic Arts Network and the Society for the Promotion of New Music.

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