CFP: Decorated Music: Visual Art in a Musical Context in the 15th and 16th
centuries (RSA March 2011)

CALL FOR PAPERS
Renaissance Society of America (RSA) Annual Conference
Montreal, Canada
24-26 March 2011

Deadline March 17th, 2010

PANEL: Decorated Music: Visual art in a musical context in the 15th and 16th
centuries

This panel will consider the ways and places where art and music collide in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Studies in musical iconography have
often used visual material as a source of information on the appearance of
instruments of performance practices, types of music used in given situations
(in church, for example), and to support suggested relationships between
music and contemporary concepts in theology, theory or history.

The panel will focus on images that appear in conjunction with music or in a
musical context which are not necessarily images of musicians or
performances. Suggested areas of investigation include images accompanying
illuminated music manuscripts, woodcuts and engravings in early printed
material, decorated organ doors and choir stalls, and carved or painted
instruments.

Questions open to investigation include: how and in what ways do these
objects express a relationship between music and art? What kinds of
narratives/themes/iconographies recur? How are they influenced by specific
locations, patrons or users? What is distinctive about the method of visual
expression? Who commissions these objects and how were they used? What can
they say about contemporary perceptions of devotional/secular music?

All areas of interaction between music and art will be considered.

Please send proposals (of 200 words maximum) for a 20 minute paper to Sarah
Schell ( ss528st-andrews.ac.uk).
Provide a brief CV, with full name, email address, institutional affiliation,
title of paper and any A/V requirements you may have.

Deadline: 17th May 2010
Submit to Sarah Schell (University of St Andrews) at: ss528st-andrews.ac.uk
RSA website: http://www.rsa.org/