Presented By: School of Music, Theatre & Dance (SMTD)
Carrigan Lecture in Music Theory: Professor Olivia Lucas
“When All This Is Ended”: Lingua Ignota and the Limits of Analysis
The Department of Music Theory hosts a presentation by guest scholar Olivia R. Lucas as part of the Carrigan Lecture Series in Music Theory. Free and open to the public.
ABSTRACT
What does it mean to love a song that expresses the brutality of intimate partner violence? And further, what does it mean to analyze such a song—to discover its deep structure?
In this paper, I examine the experience of listening to and analyzing the music of the experimental musician Lingua Ignota. Taking her project name from Hildegard von Bingen’s mystical constructed language, her music explores the intersections of Christianity, trauma, and intimate partner abuse. Sonically, her music traverses deconstructed elements of metal and noise music, vocal techniques that range from extended screams to classical mezzo-soprano, and extensively researched references to Catholic, Pentecostal, Mennonite, and Western art musical traditions. The resulting complexly layered musical texts deploy the subjectivity of Christian faith as a metaphor for intimate partner abuse. I trace how the timbral, textual, and vocal-expressive layers of Lingua Ignota’s music shape deeply uncomfortable sonic experiences in which a victim’s struggle to make her abuser love her is given the apocalyptic scale of a sinner struggling to avoid eternal hellfire. Building on recent work in critical music theory, I use these uncomfortable emotional experiences to explore moments when analytical writing seems to fail.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
OLIVIA R. LUCAS is an Associate Professor of Music Theory at Louisiana State University. Her work on metal music has been published in Music Theory Online, Popular Music, The Journal of Sonic Studies, and several edited volumes. Her article “Performing Analysis, Performing Metal” won the 2023 SMT Emerging Scholar (Article) award. She also co-edited the volume Teaching Difficult Topics: Reflections from the Undergraduate Music Classroom (University of Michigan Press, 2024). In her free time she enjoys dancing with her Mardi Gras Krewe, the Ogden Park Coven.
ABSTRACT
What does it mean to love a song that expresses the brutality of intimate partner violence? And further, what does it mean to analyze such a song—to discover its deep structure?
In this paper, I examine the experience of listening to and analyzing the music of the experimental musician Lingua Ignota. Taking her project name from Hildegard von Bingen’s mystical constructed language, her music explores the intersections of Christianity, trauma, and intimate partner abuse. Sonically, her music traverses deconstructed elements of metal and noise music, vocal techniques that range from extended screams to classical mezzo-soprano, and extensively researched references to Catholic, Pentecostal, Mennonite, and Western art musical traditions. The resulting complexly layered musical texts deploy the subjectivity of Christian faith as a metaphor for intimate partner abuse. I trace how the timbral, textual, and vocal-expressive layers of Lingua Ignota’s music shape deeply uncomfortable sonic experiences in which a victim’s struggle to make her abuser love her is given the apocalyptic scale of a sinner struggling to avoid eternal hellfire. Building on recent work in critical music theory, I use these uncomfortable emotional experiences to explore moments when analytical writing seems to fail.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
OLIVIA R. LUCAS is an Associate Professor of Music Theory at Louisiana State University. Her work on metal music has been published in Music Theory Online, Popular Music, The Journal of Sonic Studies, and several edited volumes. Her article “Performing Analysis, Performing Metal” won the 2023 SMT Emerging Scholar (Article) award. She also co-edited the volume Teaching Difficult Topics: Reflections from the Undergraduate Music Classroom (University of Michigan Press, 2024). In her free time she enjoys dancing with her Mardi Gras Krewe, the Ogden Park Coven.
Cost
- Free - no tickets required
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