Undergraduate student François Cloete receives SMA outstanding paper award

François Cloete (Merton College, 2022) has received the outstanding paper award at this year's Society for Music Analysis Theory and Analysis Graduate Student Conference.

The conference was held at Royal Holloway and attracted an international range of speakers at graduate and doctoral level. François was one of only two undergraduates giving a paper.

François’s paper, “Transient forms: Tonality and migration politics in Alban Berg’s Wozzeck,” drew on music analysis and political theory to trace dynamics of exclusion in Berg's opera with contemporary significance. It is soon to be published on the SMA website.

His research was supervised by Professor Naomi Waltham-Smith and Dr Dylan Price and was generously funded by a Summer Research Award at Merton.

Professor Waltham-Smith commented:

The paper is an impressively ambitious fusion of critical theory and musical analysis speaking to contemporary concerns. François worked tremendously hard during last summer vac and this award is wonderful recognition of his achievement.