The 1st International Conference on The Musical Heritage of the Crown of Aragón was held in Valencia (Spain) in 2019 and was a pioneering initiative in the approach to the musical history shared by the regions that made up this political and cultural entity which lasted until the 18th century. However, the aims of the Conference went above and beyond pure musicological debate; a further objective was to encourage reflection on the routes available today to inform other professionals and society in general about the knowledge gleaned from research. In short, to establish dialogue among the various agents who are part of the integral process of acquiring and transferring knowledge, such as musicologists, historians, educators, performers and communicators. The success of the 1st Conference has led to a 2nd Conference being organised which will continue to study this theme in great depth and will take place in Valencia (Spain) from 28th to 30th January 2021.

Having reviewed the current state of historical research in the 1st Conference, this 2nd Conference will present recent progress made in research through ten papers which will be presented in two of the available sessions. The first session will be monographically devoted to Jaime I and his era and the second session will deal with a selection of courtly contexts for music between the 15th century and the beginning of the 18th century in different regional areas of the Crown of Aragón. There will also be two sessions set aside for knowledge transfer, education and dissemination, with papers and round tables. Other activities will also be included, such as concerts, book presentations and a visit to the old monastery, San Miguel de los Reyes.

The Conference will also be receptive to the presentation of subjects freely chosen by researchers who wish to publicly convey the results of their latest research into the historico-geographical context of the ancient Crown of Aragón. Proposals for papers on the history of the music of the Crown of Aragón (12th century -1707), knowledge transfer and education will be accepted in Spanish, Valenciano/Catalán, Italian and English:

o Music in the royal courts and those of the nobility. 
o Music under the patronage of the Church.
o Musical activities promoted by civil institutions.
o Music networks in the cities.
o Music and secular and religious ceremonies. o Soundscape.
o Development of music in private spaces.
o Manufacture of musical instruments.
o Biographies and prosopographies of musicians.
o Social history of musicians.
o Repertoires of plain song, polyphony and instrumental music.
o Musical sources.
o Teaching of music. Musical treatises.
o Knowledge transfer, innovation, dissemination via exhibitions, digital technology, databases, music publishing, training researchers and teachers in the musical heritage of the Crown of Aragón.
o Creating modern educational resources.

Research linking the various areas of the Crown of Aragón or comparing the situation within the Crown of Aragón with other political entities will have preference.

The time limit for each paper (in Spanish, Valenciano/Catalán, Italian or English) will be 15 minutes. In view of the current pandemic, a video recording may be made to replace an in-person presentation. This must be sent to the secretary before 21st January 2021 and it will be played in the conference hall for the time limit corresponding to the paper.

Anyone wishing to propose a paper must send the title and an abstract of between 250 and 300 words (written in such a way that the identity of the author is secret), in a Word document, to the Conference Secretary: info.fund@culturalcdm.eu (Ana Jiménez). The deadline for proposals is 30h November 2020.

The Scientific Committee will be responsible for selecting the papers and the Secretary will advise the people selected before 7th December 2020. Once advised that their work is accepted, those selected must register and make the corresponding payment of 30 euros.

Scientific Committee

Antonio Ezquerro Esteban (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas).
Antoni Furió (Universitat de València).
Maricarmen Gómez Muntané (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona).
Tess Knighton (ICREA/Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona).
Francesco Zimei (Istituto Abruzzese di Storia Musicale (L’Aquila-Teramo)).

Conference Management

Rosa Isusi Fagoaga.
Francesc Villanueva Serrano.

Secretary

Ana Jiménez.

Organised by:

Associació Cultural Comes and Fundació Cultural CdM.

XV INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF MUSICOLOGY,
UNIVERSITY OF ARTS IN BELGRADE, FACULTY OF MUSIC
Belgrade, 21 to 23 October 2021

The Department of Musicology of the Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade, has decided to postpone the Conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Conference will take place in Belgrade from 21 to 23 October 2021. The organizers of this conference will make contingency plans for an online event, in case an in-person gathering is not possible, because of the continuing uncertainties arising from the COVID-19 pandemic.

A second call for paper is open now, until 15 March 2021; decisions and notifications are re-scheduled for 1 May 2021. Those papers that have already been accepted will be programmed as a matter of course. Details are available on the website. Further information about the conference will also follow in due time.

CONFERENCE CALL

The Department of Musicology of the Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade, is pleased to announce its Fifteenth International Conference on the topic Music–Musicology–Interpretation.

The subject of the conference Music-Musicology-Interpretation focuses on the complex and multifaceted relationships between the constituent concepts. It proposes to re-examine these multiple relations by thematizing, from the point of view of interpretation, music as language, discourse, work of art and text, the performance of music and the discourse on music – musicology itself.

Musical hermeneutics as a discipline is today the focus of musicological interest. During the last three decades of the 20th century, it developed in parallel with research into musical semiotics and, as the influence of “pure” structural analysis was waning, it became an important current of thought about music at the beginning of the 21st century. Its renewal in relation to the legacy of the 19th century was partly due to interpretive criticism in Anglo-Saxon literature but also to the works of Carl Dahlhaus in the 1970s and 1980s. Next come researchers into hermeneutics and interpretive criticism and analysis, each with a different orientation in their individual pathways and objects of study, most of whom are still active today: Joseph Kerman, Nicholas Cook, Leo Treitler, Lawrence Kramer, Robert Hatten, Eero Tarasti, Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Michel Imberty, Bernard Vecchione, Christian Hauer, Makis Solomos…

In his Peri Hermeneias, Aristotle established an equality between “sounds emitted by the voice” and symbolic language, that is, meaningful language: “The sounds emitted by the voice are the symbols of the states of the soul, and the written words the symbols of words emitted by the voice” (Peri Hermeneias, 1 / 16a /). Being symbolic, signifying language is thus equated with interpretive language, mediating the relation of the transmitter “of the voice” to the things of the world, with the written language then constituted as a double mediation: of the spoken language and the things themselves. This chain of consecutive “interpretations-appropriations” (Ricœur, From Text to Action, 1986) thus recalls a chain of musical interpretations: the things of the world (the world of life, being-in-the-world) – the music (discourse, work of art, text) – the performance of music – the discourse on music, projecting, through the hermeneutical arc, into a new being-in-the-world, as an understanding of oneself in front of signs (Ricœur, ibid).

This chain allows us to problematize the relationship between music, discourse on music and interpretation on several levels.

At the methodological level, it enables us to re-examine the position of musicological interpretive criticism in relation to primary research, technical analysis and structural explanation, on the one hand, and the “new musicology”, on the other, and, at the disciplinary level, to re-examine the position of and relationship between musical hermeneutics and structuralism, as well as semiotics. In both cases, the question can be raised as to whether the structural explanation of the musical work or the explanation of the signs of culture, on the one hand, and interpretation, on the other, are mutually exclusive, or whether a methodological reconciliation is possible in the sense of the mediating role of explanation in the process of understanding, explanation and understanding being integrated into the interpretive chain.

At the poetic level, it allows us to reopen the question of the interpretive character of the musical work/discourse/text itself as the “voice emitted”, thus already the symbolic voice, and then to re-problematize the relationship between musical language and meaning, reference, representation, narrativity and time. In this sense, another question can be posed, namely how the specific abilities of music can help shed light on the interpretive process and the contemporary hermeneutical task in general. Also related to this is the problematics of the historicity of musical hermeneutics / musical interpretation, as well as the problematics of the interpretive discourse on music in history and as history. The issue of the subjectivity and objectivity of the discourse on music and music itself is part of the old debate but it lends itself to reconsideration in relation to music as a “thing” (L. Kramer) and the work of interpretation as event, action, dynamism, creation, production. The notion of metaphor, extracted as a key concept in different conceptualizations by many authors, musicologists and philosophers, is also proposed for examination: as a musical metaphor (at the poetic level) and as a metaphor in the discourse on music.

As a link in the interpretive process, the performance of a musical score as “appropriation” and actualization of a musical text, as a realization of its meaning in another “voice”, offers itself to examination, testifying to the opening of the musical work, discourse and text. In that sense, when it comes to interpreting music from the aspect of performing practice, it is understood as something much more than a mere reproduction of the score in sound. The variable roles of the music performer throughout history represent different social, cultural, stylistic, etc. conditions under which music is understood. In all these different approaches to a work of music, it is implicitly indicated that all of its incidences and meaningful transformations are only achieved by the performance.

The position of the listener in the interpretive process can be approached from several angles: semantic, psychological, narrative. Does the interpretive process not in fact end in the effectuation of the sense in the discourse (tacit or explicit, oral or written) of the listener who has passed through the musical interpretive chain?

Referring to the aforementioned findings, the following topics could be considered:

• Interpretive criticism in musicology versus primary research and the “new musicology”
• Musical hermeneutics versus semiotics and structural analysis of music
• Musical hermeneutics / interpretation in history and as history
• Musical work / discourse / text as interpretation
• Musical language and meaning, reference, representation, narrativity and time
• Musical metaphor and metaphor in the discourse on music
• Subjectivity and objectivity in musical interpretation
• Music and / as performance
• Musical performance and / as analysis of music
• Historically informed performance as a field of recreation of the past
• The listener as interpreter

Please submit your paper topic (including the thematic area as listed above) to Ivana Petković Lozo at e-mail address: muzikologija@fmu.bg.ac.rs

The submission deadline is March 15th, 2021.

Please include your short biography and an abstract of 250 words. You will be notified by 1 May, 2021 if your topic has been accepted.

The official language of the conference is English. It is possible to deliver papers also in German, French, Russian, and Serbian, but the authors are kindly requested to provide a Power-Point presentation in English or the translation of their papers in English. The time limit for the presentation and discussion of your paper is set at 30 minutes in total. Selected papers presented at the conference will be published in the proceedings.

Conference fee: Both participation at the Conference and the publication of a text whose topic has been accepted by the Programme Committee are conditional upon the payment of the participation fee. The travel expenses, per diem expenses and hotel accommodation are to be covered by the participants. The fee can be paid on the spot or with PayPal (120€; early bird, deadline June 15th, 2020: 100€; PhD candidates: 50€). Participants will be notified about PayPal payments instructions.

More about conference, themes and participation you may find at conference web site https://musicmusicologyinterpretation2020.wordpress.com/

Keynote Speakers:

Danielle Cohen-Levinas
Professor of Musicology and Philosophy
Université Paris 4 / ENS-CNRS, France

Robert S. Hatten
Marlene & Morton Meyerson Professor in Music
Professor of Music Theory
Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music
The University of Texas at Austin, USA (TBC)

Lawrence Kramer
Distinguished Professor of English and Music
Fordham University, USA

Makis Solomos
Professor of Musicology
Université Paris 8, France

Eero Tarasti
Professor emeritus of Musicology
The University of Helsinki, Finland

Programme Committee:

Professor Antonio Baldassarre, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Suisse
Professor Danielle Cohen-Levinas, Université Paris 4 / ENS-CNRS, France
Associate Professor Paulo Ferreira de Castro, CESEM – Nova FCSH, Portugal
Professor Robert S. Hatten, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Distinguished Professor Lawrence Kramer, Fordham University, USA
Associate Professor Marija Masnikosa, University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia
Professor Ivana Perković, University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia
Professor Tijana Popović Mladjenović, University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia
Professor Makis Solomos, Université Paris 8, France
Professor Irina Susidko, Gnesins Russian Academy of Music in Moscow, Russia
Professor Leon Stefanija, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Professor Ana Stefanović, University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia
Professor Dragana Stojanović-Novičić, University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia
Professor emeritus Eero Tarasti, University of Helsinki, Finland
Academician, Professor emeritus Stanislav Tuksar, HAZU/University of Zagreb, Croatia
Professor Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman, University of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia

Organizing Committee:

Stefan Cvetković, PhD candidate, Teaching Assistant, University of Arts in Belgrade
Marina Marković, PhD candidate, Teaching Assistant, University of Arts in Belgrade
Ivana Miladinović-Prica, PhD, Teaching Assistant, University of Arts in Belgrade
Radoš Mitrović, PhD, Teaching Assistant, University of Arts in Belgrade
Ivana Petković Lozo, PhD, Teaching Assistant, University of Arts in Belgrade
Neda Nestorović, PhD candidate, Research Assistant, University of Arts in Belgrade
Milica Petrović, PhD candidate, Junior Researcher, University of Arts in Belgrade
Marija Simonović, PhD candidate, Research Assistant, University of Arts in Belgrade
Maša Spaić, PhD student, Junior Researcher, University of Arts in Belgrade
Marija Tomić, PhD student, Junior Researcher, University of Arts in Belgrade