International Musicological Society-Study Group on Musical Iconography

CFP: Travellers to Faraway Countries and the Musical Imagination on the Move, 1500–1900

International Conference. Lecce, Università del Salento, 28-29 September 2015

By the early sixteenth century, European encounters with faraway cultures had led to a new awareness of the cultural ‘other’ and of non-European musical cultures, which found its expression in the writings of travelers and scholars, in the imagination of visual artists, and in the rendering of ‘exotic’ features in musical compositions. Some of the images associated with this emerging awareness, may have been the result of firsthand experiences or eyewitness participation. Others, by contrast, represented mostly secondhand impressions, which despite pretensions of authenticity, partook in visual or auditory imaginary journeys whose details in many cases could have been triggered by learned traditions of literary culture. Quite often, depictions were far removed from the ‘original’; they were idealized and filtered through European sensibilities and according to models of the classical world; as such, iconographical patterns, once crystallized, could have been transmitted from author to author through centuries, thus further removing the received image from the original (if such original ever existed). Ultimately, the firsthand experience of distant cultures made possible the rise of a new sensitivity towards indigenous strands of music to be (re-) interpreted according to the patterns of colonialist imagination. In this context, a better understanding of the ‘constructedness’ of images is crucial for musical iconography.
We invite paper proposals for a two-day conference, which address the following topics, among others:
- images of music in illustrated chronicles and travel accounts related to America, Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe (‘Grand Tour’);
- visual references to foreign (exotic, oriental), indigenous (ethnic) and bucolic (pastoral) music in music treatises, emblematic literature, paintings, drawings, engravings, pictorial cycles to be found within aristocratic palaces and residences etc.;
- Italian music and dance as viewed through the eyes of transalpine travellers and scholars;
- Italian music (and related imagery) as a source of inspiration for composers;
- transmission, reception and circulation of pictorial topoi to be found in music historiography.
- processes of ‘othering’ vs. ‘assimilating’, ‘artistic’ vs. ‘ethnological’ approaches;
- exotic strands in the decoration of musical instruments.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words for 20-minute papers in English or Italian may be sent by 30 April 2015 to daniela.castaldounisalento.it

Scientific Committee
Daniela Castaldo (Local Organizer, Università del Salento)
Gabriela Currie (University of Minnesota)
Dinko Fabris (IMS President, Università della Basilicata)
Nicoletta Guidobaldi (Università di Bologna-Ravenna)
Björn R. Tammen (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna)