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Singing corporeality: reinventing the vocalic body in postopera
Novak, J.
Publication date
2012
Link to publication
Citation for published version (APA):
Novak, J. (2012). Singing corporeality: reinventing the vocalic body in postopera.
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Acknowledgements
Belgrade, Amsterdam, Lisbon: these are the cities that outlined my life in large measure during the years in which this dissertation was emerging. I cannot think about this research process without connecting it to these three different contexts within which it was embedded. It was all there: strained, curious and seductive Belgrade, energetic and floating Amsterdam, and luminous and unfathomable Lisbon. It would be strange to express my gratitude to the cities. Nevertheless, I am confident that my work on this thesis owes a lot to all three of them. My supervisor Rokus de Groot provided strong support during the entire period of the research and writing. Instead of offering solutions to the problems, he encouraged me through discussion to find the way out for myself. He let me establish the direction I wanted to follow, and although sometimes that was not the most comfortable way to proceed, I am extremely grateful to him that he adopted this approach.
My special thanks go to the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis that provided an institutional framework for my research, and especially to its managing director Eloe Kingma whose advice was invaluable. I am very grateful to Nuffic which supported me for the second time with a Huygens grant in 2007-8. I am also grateful to Maaike Bleeker, whose advice strengthened my argumentation. In final years of my research I became a collaborator of the Center for Studies of Aesthetics and Sociology of Music (CESEM) in Lisbon, and the support that I received there, especially from colleagues Paula Gomes Ribeiro and Mario Vieira de Carvalho, meant a lot.
Since I was an external PhD candidate at ASCA, and since I only travelled to the Netherlands from time to time, this nomadic situation prompted me constantly to re-create a context for my research from theories, arts, and discussions with friends and colleagues from different places. Among those involved were composers and directors about whose works I write and whom I was lucky to be able to meet and/or talk to: Michel van der Aa, Louis Andriessen, Philip Glass, Peter Greenaway, Hal Hartley, Robert Wilson, Steve Reich. I must mention also my colleagues from the Society of Minimalist Music who offered advice and/or helped with proofreading my text for English: Kyle Gann, Tristian Evans, Keith Potter, John Pymm, Pwyl Ap Sion; colleagues and friends that I met during conferences, with whom I had inspiring conversations and who also commented on some of the chapters: Teresa Havelkova, Ulrike Hartung, Pavel Jiracek, Bianca Michaels, Christopher Morris, Nicholas Till, John Richardson, Pieter Verstraete, Caroline Wilkins; my old friends and colleagues who read versions of the manuscript and were dynamic interlocutors: Bojan Djordjev, Siniša Ilić, Ivana Ilić-Stamatovic, Ana Vujanović, and Jim Samson, whose language support and wise advice in the final stages of writing were irreplaceable; my good friend Frits van der Waa who taught me beautiful things about music, drawing, writing, parenting and Amsterdam, and who helped with the translation of parts of the text in Dutch; my dear friends Jasna Veličković and Danijela Šendula, who
154 not only discussed my research problems with me, but also always generously invited me to stay in their Amsterdam and Rotterdam homes when I was in The Netherlands.
My family is my strongest support. My parents Mirjana and Tomislav, and my brother Ivan, always respected my choices, and never failed to encourage me to explore. I am very grateful for that. My inspiring fellow traveler Dejan is the one that cherished this research daily at all kinds of levels, and without his support it would have looked much different. The work on the dissertation began in a year when our son Luka joined us. He is the most beautiful research companion that I could ever have wished for. I can only hope that at least some of his immense curiosity, love of play and irresistible charm encouraged me to make this writing more interesting for readers. Thank you, Luka.
My wonderful grandfather Col Vlastimir Stojanović has supported me in all kinds of ways since I was born. It was maybe back then when I was one year old, and when he started tape recording my first words, poems and songs, that my interest in the power of the voice and its relationship to the body was born. My grandfather is probably the most devoted reader that I will ever have. My way of sharing this special moment with him is to dedicate this book to his memory.
