UCLA scholar-in-residence uses literary background to understand music

For UCLA Department of Music scholar-in-residence Su Yin Mak, music is more than just sound – music is a language. Mak has dedicated her academic and professional career to interpreting the stories that a piece of music can tell.

At UCLA, Mak assisted Robert Winter, a distinguished music professor, in his graduate-level music class. She will be giving a lecture Thursday as a part of the musicology department’s distinguished lecture series, entitled “Of that life-warm image: Representations of the Imagination in Schubert’s String Quartet in A minor, D. 804.”

Mak said her lecture will explore how the lyrical aspects of Schubert’s music can evoke feelings of nostalgia in the listener. She said her area of specialization has always been in early 19th-century classical German music, with a special emphasis on Schubert.

“What I’m very committed to is discussing those aspects of structures that make the musical experience more compelling,” Mak said.

Mak has also been appointed artist associate for the Hong Kong Sinfonietta for the 2014-2015 season. She said that artist associate is usually delegated to composers and artists, and that she is excited to be one of the first academics to hold the position.

“What I do is attempt to bridge this gap between the practical, performance side of music and the structural understanding of music,” Mak said.

Mak writes a music blog for the Sinfonietta, which she said aims to bring an accessible understanding of music analysis to the general public. In addition to blog-writing, Mak also translates and composes poetry of her own. Her poems have been published in the anthology, “OutLoud Too.”

“If I didn’t study literature I probably wouldn’t think about music the way that I do,” Mak said. “So I think it’s kind of integrated.”

During winter quarter, Mak assisted Winter in his class, Music 202: “Analysis for Performers.”

“This class tries to get performing students to think about music differently, but it also encourages them to write about it and talk about it, which I think is very important,” Mak said.

Emma Stansfield, a graduate student in viola performance, and Geoffrey Pope, a doctoral student in orchestral and opera conducting, were both students who took the class. Stansfield said that both Winter and Mak taught in an open-minded and nontraditional manner.

“I found (Mak) to be incredibly bright and engaging, not just with the class … but with people on an individual level,” Pope said.

Music 202 was a discussion-based class, concentrating on how the technical aspects of a piece of music can affect the listening experience and thematic message that its audience receives, Mak said. The students were required to give presentations on the pieces that they were performing, while focusing on how to link musical performance with analysis.

“It is very important to be able to talk about the music that you’re playing,” Mak said. “Even for music majors, there are some aspects of music structure that they intuitively sense, but they don’t really know why.”

Pope said he was influenced by his experience and Mak’s guidance in Music 202 while at a recent concert. As he was conducting, he came to several bars of music that he and Mak had discussed at length just weeks earlier. Pope said that he and Mak debated in a constructive discussion concerning the section of music.

“As musicians, we have to understand the music that we’re playing in order to communicate it to an audience,” Stansfield said.

Mak will remain as a scholar-in-residence at UCLA until the end of spring quarter before returning to Hong Kong, where she teaches music theory at the Chinese University of Hong Kong as an associate professor.

“She cares about performers; she cares about music-making, not simply theoretical issues,” Pope said. “Her teaching really helps us to understand the music we’re performing better and helps us to perform it better.”