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Global Mediterranean. Postcolonial music histories (16th-20th centuries). IMS Intercongressional Symposium

9–12 Jul 2025
Facultat de Filologia, Traducció i Comunicació – Universitat de València
Europe/Madrid timezone

Turevents & Go

Contribution List

136 / 136
152. Dalmatian Music Reimagined: Understanding Transformations
09/07/2025, 09:00

Like much of the Mediterranean, Dalmatia has become a globally sought-after tourist destination over the past century. Along with its sun, sea, wine, and olives, it offers the distinctive sound of Dalmatian klapa – a traditional vocal ensemble deeply rooted in the region. The klapa repertoire reflects a range of influences, e.g. Italian canzone, church music, the brass band tradition,...
22. From theatre to street: the role of the organillo in shaping Madrid’s musical identity in the Late 19th century
09/07/2025, 09:00

The popular instrument known as organillo in the Spanish music street has been tightly linked with the imaginary of the “old Madrid” music by the end of the 19th century. The same repertoire performed in theatres and balls was played afterwards on squares and streets of the capital using these gadgets. Particularly noteworthy was its relation with a specific type of theatre, a kind of short...
201. General Assembly of the IMS SG “Mediterranean Music Studies”
Dinko Fabris (University of Basilicata)
09/07/2025, 09:00

Presentation of Projects
Next meetings and general discussion
47. Negotiating Artistic Identity in the Context of Migration and Exile: The Case of Clara Haskil
09/07/2025, 09:00

Clara Haskil was one of the most important pianists of the 20th century and the first prominent Romanian pianist. Growing up in a politically and ideologically fragmented Europe permeated by nationalist ideologies that promoted eugenics and marginalized Jewish communities, Haskil's identity as a Sephardic Jewish musician placed her at the intersection of many cultural and social challenges...
173. Inti-Illimani's Mediterranean Music and the Alchemy of Exile (1973–1988)
09/07/2025, 09:20

The prolonged exile in Rome of the Chilean new song group Inti-illimani (1967-), slowly but intensely linked the band with the Italian Mediterranean culture, with which Chileans had had little direct contact. After feeding their curiosity with these new sonorities, instruments and genres, the band's director, Horacio Salinas, began to compose Mediterranean-inspired instrumental music to...
39. Musical Bridges Across the Atlantic: Forgotten Artists and the Transoceanic Circulation of Lusophone Music in the Early 20th Century
09/07/2025, 09:20

Throughout the 20th century, phonographic industries unprecedentedly intensified the circulation of music between countries and territories with Lusophone heritage. Local music genres such as samba and maxixe in Brazil, and fado in Portugal, were promoted through musical industry to the symbolic status of national music, becoming part of a vast and complex system of transoceanic circulation....
111. The Tune of Folías de Espanya in Catalan Popular Songs from Eighteenth Century
09/07/2025, 09:20

A significant number of Catalan manuscript songbooks from the Eighteenth century have been preserved, testifying to a vibrant popular singing tradition that is still little known. These songbooks contain only the lyrics of the songs, but not their music, which has led to their marginalisation in musicological studies.
Fortunately, some of the melodies to which these songs were performed are...
209. SG Gender and Musical Patronage
Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita (Universidad de Granada), Jann Pasler (University of California, San Diego), Magdalini Kalopana (Laboratory Teaching Staff - Department of Music Studies-National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), Roberta Vidic, María Cáceres, Claire Fontijn (Wellesley College), Cristina Fernandes (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Vincenzina Ottomano
09/07/2025, 09:30
SG-contribution
SG Gender & Patronage

This session will offer an informal space for members of the IMS Study Group to meet in person or online, share their current research and ongoing projects, and explore opportunities for future collaboration. From 9:30 to 12:00, participants will present their work in 15-minute blocks—including short presentations and open discussion—allowing for a dynamic and flexible exchange. The session is...
53. Entangled between hardware and software infrastructure: Assamese Popular music making in studios in Guwahati, Assam, India
09/07/2025, 09:40

Recording studio is the rite to passage in popular music production from its inception. Be it for voice dubbing, live instruments recording or mixing and mastering ‘recording studio’ is incessantly ‘in between’ after a composition is made and its release as a popular song to the listeners. Situating ‘recording studio’ as the hardware infrastructure of making of popular music, paper will take...
31. Italian Arab Musical Encounters (1880s-1930s): Sound and Power
09/07/2025, 09:40

This paper concerns the histories of mobility and movement in the Mediterranean through music. It aims to address musical exchanges between Italians and Tunisians that followed French occupation (1881) and between Italians and Egyptians developed during Italian migrations (1920s). Firstly, through several fieldworks in Tunis (2015-2017) and Marseille (2023), and archival research, focusing on...
188. Negotiating Urban Musical Culture in Barcelona’s Domestic Concerts (1760–1808)
09/07/2025, 09:40

The subscription concert held in domestic settings has recently emerged in scholarly research as a key component of elite leisure in late eighteenth-century Spain. In response to the scarcity of public concerts and the institutional control of theatres, domestic concerts appear to have constituted a primary site for musical and cultural negotiation—albeit one that remains relatively...
94. A New Book on Qājār Music and Art in Iran: ʿAmalajāt-i Ṭarab-i Ḵāṣa (Exclusive Royal Musicians)
09/07/2025, 10:30

This presentation explores my book’s content, research process, and the historical significance of two Qājār-era paintings depicting musicians.

The book ʿAmalajāt-i Ṭarab-i Ḵāṣa (Exclusive Royal Musicians) examines two paintings related to music from the Qājār period (1794–1925), during the reign of Nāser-al-Din Šāh (r. 1848–1896). The first painting, ʿAlī-Akbar Farāhānī va Šāgerdānaš...
180. Emissaries of power. Material and symbolic journeys in the urban phonospheres of the Hispanic Mediterranean (17th century)
09/07/2025, 10:30

In the early modern age, urban phonospheres of the Catholic western Mediterranean were defined within the ceremonial framework of civil religion. Hence the homogeneity of the rituals in which they were generated and of the institutions that produced them. The hegemony, or direct rule, of the Spanish monarchy contributes to the composition of a uniform image. Does this necessarily imply the...
113. “Sol y sal”: music strategies regarding Mar Menor’s ecocide
09/07/2025, 10:30

Located in the Southeast of Spain, the Mar Menor is the biggest coastal saltwater lagoon of Europe. Since at least 2015, due to a mix of various anthropogenic causes, it has faced a big ecological crisis, with two mass deaths of fauna in 2019 and 2021 due to the eutrophication of its waters. This intervention analyzes the musical responses to the Mar Menor ecological crisis. Focusing on...
149. Exploring Early Modern Spanish Musical Imagery through Digital Tools
09/07/2025, 10:50

This presentation outlines the initial developments of In-Music: Interactive Tools for the Study and the Enhancement of Music Iconography, a project supported by a 2024 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Post-Doctoral Fellowship and hosted by the DIDPATRI research group at the University of Barcelona.
Bridging historical musicology, music iconology, and digital humanities, In-Music aims to...
3. When Spain courted tourists: Music in the tourism promotion magazines of the first half of the 20th century
09/07/2025, 10:50

While in countries such as Switzerland and France tourism had already been consolidated in the 19th century as an economic and cultural vector, at the beginning of the 20th century in Spain tourism was still an incipient, marginal activity lacking public regulation or organised national promotion. However, it was beginning to attract the attention of both political agents and businessmen at a...
124. Theaters of the Mediterranean and Circulation of Opera
09/07/2025, 11:00

The idea of exploring the “Circulation of Opera and Operatic Companies around the Mediterranean Theaters” was born during the meeting of our IMS Study Group at the Med-Ren conference in Lisbon 2021, where the participants approved the proposal to organize a panel on this topic at the 21st IMS Quinquennial Congress in Athens 2022. Two years later the same group had a second meeting in Valletta,...
167. Musical iconography in nineteenth-century Brazilian illustrated periodicals: the first phase of the Revista Illustrada (Rio de Janeiro, 1876-1889) (remote)
09/07/2025, 11:10

This paper presents a survey of images (lithographs) related to music that were published in the issues of the Brazilian illustrated periodical Revista Illustrada. Based in Rio de Janeiro, this periodical had a notable activity, existing for over two decades and having a record breaking circulation in Latin America. Its first phase ranges from its founding in 1876 by the Italian-Brazilian...
123. Traditional music in the Pitiusas Islands: towards a sustainable genre (remote)
09/07/2025, 11:10

The islands of Ibiza and Formentera, especially after the Civil War, underwent a series of social, political and economic changes that influenced the panorama of traditional music, leading to the almost total disappearance of the practice and performance of much of its repertoire, which subsequently forced them to initiate a process of recovery and safeguarding of this.

This recovery and...
30. Breaking Sociocultural Boundaries: Basso Continuo Practice as ‘Trans-Social’ Tool in Eighteenth-Century Venice
Elia Pivetta (University of Pavia)
09/07/2025, 12:30

When studying basso continuo practices as historical musicologists or theorists, we usually examine treatises and compare them with the music of ‘great’ composers in order to formulate analysis, reflect on creative processes, or to draw insights for performance practice. However, our knowledge of these practices remains tied to specific exemplary cases, with the risk of ‘incomplete’...
208. Building Musicology from the Ground Up: The Valencian-Mediterranean Experience of AVAMUS
Marta Mechó Fenollosa (AVAMUS)
09/07/2025, 12:30

In 2025, AVAMUS (Associació Valenciana de Musicologia) celebrates its 20th anniversary. Founded in 2005, this association has become a key platform for the promotion of musicological research in the Valencian Community and the broader Mediterranean area. This panel offers a multi-voiced reflection on its trajectory, its institutional and academic contributions, and its future potential within...
164. Opera in Colonial Vietnam: Symbol of Power and Authority?
09/07/2025, 12:30

Material expressions of power function as fundamental instruments of empire, creating controlled environments that encompass both colonizers and colonized. It is therefore unsurprising that the French administration in Indochina, between the 19th and 20th centuries, undertook expensive construction projects to solidify their authority over Southeast Asia, including the establishment of...
85. ‘Rome dominates the Skies of the World’ Fascist Italy’s Radio, Music and Sonic Propaganda: Transatlantic and Trans-Mediterranean Routes
09/07/2025, 12:30

This roundtable addresses the IMS conference’s general theme on Global Mediterranean and Postcolonial Music Histories by re-assessing the role of Italian Fascist radio broadcasting against a global backdrop. Bringing together scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds—including ethnography, history, musicology, migration studies, and media studies—this session will discuss and problematize...
142. The chord, the composer, and the instrumentalist
09/07/2025, 12:50

From the early sixteenth century, lutenists, guitarists, and keyboard players understood chords and how to use them. These instrumentalists understood what we now call functional harmony and used it in practice long before it was codified by theorists. In the same way that the unwritten practices of singer-songwriters throughout the sixteenth century have have not been accommodated into the...
87. The Italian Opera Business in South America: A Study in Migration, Colonialism, and Transculturation in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century (remote)
09/07/2025, 12:50

In her Music in Imperial Rio de Janeiro, Cristina Magaldi describes Italian opera as an “enduring force in European colonialism.” During the nineteenth century, European companies populated opera theaters in Latin America, bringing with them the belief that opera had the power of elevating or modernizing its audiences–a particularly important feature to local elites trying to escape...
89. Hispanic nuns and the global networks for the transmission of oral musical practices
09/07/2025, 13:10

Nunneries participated in cultural and liturgical exchanges involving music at national and international levels, particularly through the existing networks of their religious orders, which connected Hispanic cities to other European centres and also to the New World. This paper addresses processes of musical-cultural exchange in convent spaces, arguing that nunneries were an important focus...
178. Transoceanic Orpheus: aesthetic-musical experimentalism from opera to Brazilian carnival (remote)
09/07/2025, 13:10

In 1956, the play Orfeu da Conceição, by poet and composer Vinícius de Moraes, premiered in Rio de Janeiro, featuring music by Tom Jobim and modernist sets by Oscar Niemeyer, performed by the Teatro Experimental do Negro company. The text, transposed the mythical episode of Orpheus and Eurydice to the Rio carnival and was later adapted into film Black Orpheus (1959), directed by Marcel Camus....
119. Legal Discourse in Opéra-Comique: Annette et Lubin and Marriage Law in the Ancien Régime
09/07/2025, 15:30

Annette et Lubin (1762), an opéra-comique adapted by Justine Favart from Jean-François Marmontel’s moral tale, examines the interplay between religious and secular authority through marriage law and social ethics. At its core is the conflict arising from the protagonists’ consanguineous relationship, challenging moral norms and legal frameworks. The work highlights systemic inconsistencies...
24. Mediterranean Dialogue and Auto-Orientalism: Ontology of Spain
09/07/2025, 15:30

The question of Spain by European musical Romanticism has to be posed in ontic (ontology: the essence) and epistemic (epistemology: the ways of understanding it) terms. On the one hand, the question of Spain's being, of what it was in itself, is conditioned by the way it was seen by the European powers in the natural course of colonialism since the 19th century. On the other hand, Spain's...
179. The histories of saxophone ensembles in Brazil: the symbiotic relationship between opera and band repertoire.
09/07/2025, 15:30
Doctoral thesis presentation
PhD Presentations

This doctoral dissertation approaches the origins and development of the first saxophone ensembles in Brazil and demonstrates that this process took place through the symbiotic relationship between opera and band repertoires between 1888 and 1938, and served as the mainspring of Brazilian chamber music for this newly invented instrument. The interaction between concert and popular genres in...
170. The Noguera-López-Chavarri Letters: Networks of Folklorists and Musical Nationalism in Turn-of-the-Century Spain (MUSred Project)
09/07/2025, 15:30

The exchange of correspondence between the Mallorcan folklorist Antonio Noguera (1858–1904) and the Valencian Eduardo López-Chavarri Marco (1871–1970) provides a valuable source of information regarding the study of musical nationalism in Spain during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A comprehensive analysis of their correspondence, with a focus on the collection and...
34. Angelo Persichilli, Raymond Guiot, and the Accademia italiana del flauto
09/07/2025, 15:45
Doctoral thesis presentation
PhD Presentations

Raymond Guiot and Angelo Persichilli are remembered as significant flautists and teachers of the twentieth century in Italy. Research on flute pedagogy during this period has been dominated by a particular focus on France and the Paris Conservatoire, and there is a void of doctoral research on flute pedagogy in Italy during this time. One existing study on Raymond Guiot has a focus on his...
161. A Gregorian Chant, a Melodic Revelation from Mount Sinai, and the Burning of Martyrs at the Stake: the Legends and Presumed Relationship of Sanctus and Aleinu
09/07/2025, 15:50

We will probably never know how the earliest Christian chants were related to Jewish chants, due to the lack of ancient sources. Nevertheless, some later notations of Gregorian and synagogue chants suggest a relationship. This paper discusses one such case: the melodies of the Jewish hymn Aleinu (“We Must Praise”) and a nearly identical Sanctus. Aleinu, like the more famous Kol nidrei, belongs...
61. Llorenç Barber and Darmstadt: The Valencian Perspective during the Francoist Era
09/07/2025, 15:50

Llorenç Barber’s involvement in the Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt during the late 1960s and 1970s stands as a critical moment in his development as a composer and a figure in the Spanish avant-garde. In this paper, I explore Barber’s experience at Darmstadt, both as an observer and participant in a musical world that contrasted sharply with the political climate of Franco’s Spain....
130. Venetian "Villanesche alla Napolitana" and the repertoire of 'witches'
09/07/2025, 15:50

Between 1537 and 1570, at least 75 different editions (not counting reprints) of Canzoni villanesche alla napolitana were printed, and the phenomenon, formally speaking, continued copiously until beyond the early 1600s, to enumerate, according to our RIM-Novissimo Vogel database-repertoire a total of 180 books. It may seem paradoxical that about 80 % of this rich repertory was printed in...
90. Discursive Constructions of Cultural Meanings in Ephemeral Sources About the Concerts of the Philharmonic and Symphonic Orchestras of Havana in the 1920s.
09/07/2025, 16:00
Doctoral thesis presentation
PhD Presentations

The research analyzes the discourse constructed around the aesthetic trends of the repertoire performed by the Philharmonic and Symphonic Orchestras of Havana during the 1920s, under the direction of Pedro Sanjuán (San Sebastián, 1886–Washington, 1976) and Gonzalo Roig (Havana, July 20, 1890–June 13, 1970), respectively. These orchestras, which were in competition during their early years,...
65. From the Mediterranean to Cuyo. Two versions of Hispanism in the Regional History of Music in the first half of the 20th century (remote)
09/07/2025, 16:10

This paper explores two modalities of aesthetic reception of Hispanism, as a Mediterranean cultural current arrived and renewed since the Spanish conquest, in two musical fields in the region of Cuyo (Argentinian central-western) in the first half of the 20th century. Differences can be observed in the appropriation of poetry, the Castilian language and the European musical heritage, which...
148. Title of the Project: Zajal Digital Chronicles: An Interactive Collective Memory for the Preservation and Transmission of Lebanese Zajal (remote)
09/07/2025, 16:10

Project Overview:
The Zajal Digital Chronicles project seeks to establish an interactive digital archive dedicated to preserving and transmitting Lebanese Zajal—an oral poetic tradition deeply rooted in Lebanon’s cultural heritage. By integrating modern digital technologies and a participatory approach, this initiative ensures the longevity and accessibility of this art form in an evolving...
153. Life of 78 RPM Records on the Domestic and Foreign Markets: The Case of Zagreb-Based Record Companies
09/07/2025, 16:15
Doctoral thesis presentation
PhD Presentations

My dissertation results from a larger four-year collaborative project conducted at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb, Croatia, and funded by the Croatian Science Foundation. The project focused on the first three domestic record companies. The term “domestic” implies the historical context in which Zagreb – the companies’ headquarters – was nested within larger...
38. Musical Theatre and Collective Identities in Hispanic and Portuguese Territories (1750-1814): Galician Perspectives (remote)
09/07/2025, 16:30
Doctoral thesis presentation
PhD Presentations

From the middle of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the next one, theatre was a mass phenomenon, becoming a social shaping tool for many Enlightenment philosophers. This conception led to a series of ethical and aesthetic controversies on the stage and its music through Hispanic and Portuguese territories. They took place in different spheres: political, religious, administrative and...
83. Dioniso 2.0: The psychoacoustic fascination of the Mediterranean Dionysian in its contamination with electronic music.
09/07/2025, 17:30

This project examines contemporary audiovisual languages, focusing on compositional processes that integrate timbral, melodic, and rhythmic elements from the Mediterranean basin with orchestral and electronic music. The analysis spans from 1984, the release year of Dune, to 2024, marked by Hans Zimmer’s score for Dune: Part Two, a model for blending ancient Mediterranean music, orchestral...
139. Mus.I.Care: Taking Care of Incomplete Music
09/07/2025, 17:40

The gaps in musical witnesses, produced during the process of tradition or along the paths of dissemination, represent as many open wounds and often compromise the transmission of repertoires in space and time. Sometimes, however, this loss is not irreparable but transforms into a stimulus to analyse the compositions that have reached us incomplete with more attention and seek strategies to...
55. Alejandro García Caturla: an Afro-Cubanist Atlantic-Mediterranean path of "De-Westernisation" and "Afrotopia" in the music of the 20th century (1928-1929)
10/07/2025, 09:00

Considered the most innovative composer of the first half of the 20th century in Cuba and a pioneer of the Latin American music of his time (White, 2003), Alejandro García Caturla (1906-1940) represents a leading figure of the so-called Afro-Cuban art music. The iconoclastic language of his work positions his work within a framework of staunch modernism and experimentation, in line with the...
120. Rosa canta e cunta. Voice, memory, and resistance of a folk singer of Mediterranean culture.
10/07/2025, 09:00

Rosa Balistreri, a symbol of Sicilian popular music, played a central role in the rediscovery of oral tradition during the Italian folk revival in the 1960s (Tomatis 2016). Her journey unfolds within a context of socio-economic transformations and migrations that influenced the redefinition of Mediterranean musical identity (Nitti 1900). Like Amália Rodrigues for Portuguese fado, Balistreri...
175. The Colonna harpsichord’s journey: Changing attitudes towards early musical instruments collecting during the US American Gilded Age
10/07/2025, 09:00

This paper follows the journey of an Italian harpsichord, purchased by renowned New York architect Stanford White during his 1895 European tour, to explore changing attitudes towards early musical instruments in the United States at the turn of the century. After its travels across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean, the instrument, known as the “Colonna harpsichord,” probably once owned...
212. ‘Tapestries’ of musical images, concepts, and data in the Mediterranean – and beyond
10/07/2025, 09:00
SG-contribution
SG Musical Iconography
214. “Musicology and Mediterranean: History and Anthropology” in memory of Tullia Magrini (1950-2005)
Dinko Fabris (University of Basilicata), Vanessa Paloma Elbaz (University of Cambridge)
10/07/2025, 09:00
138. Between Silence and Song: Rethinking Amália Rodrigues in Estado Novo Portugal
10/07/2025, 09:20

Fado, a Portuguese urban folk genre, is often perceived as the Canção de Portugal [the song of Portugal], a symbol of Portuguese identity, the ‘alma’ [soul] of Portugal. However, given its prominence during the Salazar Dictatorship (1933-1974), one does not immediately associate fado with protest music - ‘explicit’ or ‘covert’. There is a lack of research on the subversive use of fado, perhaps...
56. Categories of intercultural reception of Arab Music and its Music Theory in Western Composition since 1990
10/07/2025, 09:20

Since 1990 the interaction of contemporary compositional strategies with traditional practices and tonal systems of non-Western music has been increasing in the European new music scene. The question how music material from a different musical culture can be integrated into new music and how this process can be analyzed is the core of many discussions in the last three decades in field of...
171. The Song of Erotokritos: Venetian-Cretan Legacy and 20th Century Performance Scenarios in Crete
10/07/2025, 09:20

The epic poem Erotokritos, composed by Vitsentzos Kornaros in 17th-century Crete, is a key work of Cretan literature. With its 10,012 rhyming fifteen-syllable verses in the local dialect, it tells the story of the love between Erotokritos and Aretousa, exploring themes of honour, friendship, and perseverance. While originally a literary piece, the poem gained renewed life in the 20th century...
114. A Deferred Primordial Sound: Resurfaced Musical Performance in the Milanese Armenian Avant-Garde
10/07/2025, 09:40

Can music transcend its initial performance, gaining heightened significance within diasporic contexts? How does the reception of a musical event reshape its meaning, spurring the production of new material artifacts that mediate cultural identity and intercultural negotiation? I explore these questions through the re-emergence of a flute score from Ararat, an Armenian avant-garde performance...
72. Between Modinhas and Lundus: Augusta Candiani and Marietta Baderna on the 19th-Century Brazilian Stage (remote)
10/07/2025, 09:40

Augusta Candiani and Marietta Baderna emerged as pivotal figures within the Brazilian artistic landscape of the mid-19th century, marking a significant milestone in the cultural history of the period while also exposing the steep price women paid for defying societal expectations of their time. Engaged in 1844 and 1846, respectively, to join the Italian operatic company performing at the...
169. Riccardo Bonicioli (1853-1933) as a citizen of the world and the effect of the Greek Revolution on his work (remote)
10/07/2025, 09:40

Greece, placed in the center of the Mediterranean basin, has always been a crossroads of goods, ideas and people. During the 19th century, the Greek Revolution inspired artists, poets and musicians who stood beside the Greek people and created masterpieces. Alongside, the Ionian Islands, being under Venetian - instead of Ottoman - rule for many centuries, were the part of Greece closer to...
21. Between Two Basins: The Circulation of Rioplatense Tango and the Musical Production of Cultured Tangos in the Mediterranean Region (1890-2002)
10/07/2025, 10:30

Abstract
This paper examines a corpus of compositions classified as “cultured tangos” [tangos cultos] (Buch 2012), produced between 1890 and 2002 by composers educated in the tradition of Western Art Music and native from cities near the Mediterranean Sea: Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909 from Camprodón, Girona, Spain), Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924 from Lucca, Italy), Darius Milhaud (1892-1974 from...
137. Cultural Hierarchies in Music Education for Social Change: Neocolonialism and Coloniality in the SOMOS Música Program
10/07/2025, 10:30

In scholarship on El Sistema (Baker 2014; Verhagen, Panigada, and Morales 2016) and El Sistema-inspired programs (Bull 2016, Baker 2022), little attention has been paid to the opinions of the young participants in the programs. Yet children and teenagers have ideas about the musical repertoire assigned, which in many cases contrast with the music they listen to in domestic and...
77. Harmonizing Diaspora: Situating Armenian Folk and Art Music in fin-de-siècle Paris (1890-1910)
10/07/2025, 10:50

As pogroms intensified in Central Asia (1890 ff.) and revolutionary fervor gripped Russia (1905), Armenians faced new waves of displacement, leading many to resettle in Western Europe. Paris soon emerged as a vibrant hub for an ever-growing Armenian diaspora, where writers and musicians, liberated from the constraints of empire, debated the terms of Armenian national identity. During this...
27. Musical engagements between indigenous people and Spanish Benedictines in Western Australia: the case of the Valencian monk Odo Oltra (1826-1898).
10/07/2025, 10:50

The story of music and musicians at the Benedictine Abbey of New Norcia in Western Australia is unique. Located 132km north of Perth, the Abbey was founded in 1847 by Spanish Benedictines who meticulously documented their encounters with indigenous Australians. The Abbey archives house an extraordinarily rich series of documents in Spanish and English, many of which reveal the importance of...
26. China's Oceanic Routes in Global Music History Pedagogy
10/07/2025, 11:10

The integration of China’s oceanic routes into global music history pedagogy offers a compelling framework to illuminate transregional cultural exchanges and their musical legacies. This paper investigates the Maritime Silk Road’s role in fostering dynamic interactions between China, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and beyond, highlighting how these connections enriched global musical traditions....
84. Morelia, arrival and departure of musicians from around the world in the case of the Alfonso Vega Núñez International Organ Festival (1966-1988)
10/07/2025, 11:10

The city of Morelia, Mexico, founded in the 16th century in the midst of the struggle between the Spanish and indigenous peoples, resulted in a city with a hybrid identity and an intricate cultural mosaic (Canclini, 2012). At the same time, colonial violence brought with it a Western musical culture that became deeply rooted in the city. As a result of this history, Morelia has many...
211. Escuchar el Mediterráneo: rutas, retos, propuestas
Ugo Fellone (Universidad Internacional de Valencia)
10/07/2025, 12:30

La Sociedad de Etnomusicología (SIBE) fue fundada en 1991 en Barcelona y agrupa a casi 200 socios procedentes de España, Portugal y Latinoamérica: académicos, profesores, educadores, profesionales e instituciones de conservación y difusión del patrimonio musical, así como amigos de la música tradicional y popular. Su objetivo principal es contribuir al desarrollo de la investigación y...
82. History in today’s plural societies: Mediterranean Voices (Neue Vocalsolisten 2014)
10/07/2025, 12:30

What impulses do works of contemporary music provide for a current historiography of today’s plural societies? This question will be examined on the basis of Mediterranean Voices by Neue Vocalsolisten (Stuttgart 2014) and its relations to the historiography of the Mediterranean, for which the interplay between plurality and unity is central.
The ‘video-concert architecture about twelve...
66. Mediterranean Imaginaries and Decolonial Perspectives from Abya Yala: Rethinking Global Music Histories
10/07/2025, 12:30

This panel addresses the International Musicological Society’s conference theme, Global Mediterranean: Postcolonial Music Histories (16th–20th Centuries), by proposing an expanded view of the Mediterranean as an “image-language” that transcends geographical borders and resonates in multiple contexts, including Abya Yala (Latin America). Engaging with the idea of a “resounding Mediterranean” as...
210. Music Education Between the Local and Global Across the Mediterranean
Ana María Botella Nicolás (Universitat de València)
10/07/2025, 12:30

This 90-minute session explores the teaching of music in Mediterranean contexts, focusing on the tensions and synergies between local traditions and global influences. It features invited presentations addressing music education in war-affected regions, intercultural experiences in international programs and current practices in Spanish universities, including case studies from the Universitat...
213. ‘Tapestries’ of musical images, concepts, and data in the Mediterranean – and beyond
10/07/2025, 12:30
SG-contribution
SG Musical Iconography
184. Remapping Rossini’s Operas in the Ionian Islands
10/07/2025, 12:50

During the 1820s and 1830s it would have been difficult to find a more ideal setting in which to restage Gioachino Rossini’s philhellenic opera Le Siège de Corinthe (1826) than the Nobile Teatro di San Giacomo di Corfù. The Greek Revolution was underway on the mainland, and the small Mediterranean island of Corfù was under British rule following an intense seventeen-year period (1797-1814)...
151. Toward a new ecosystem of musicological studies
10/07/2025, 12:50

Music is an essential part of European cultural and economic objectives. While this might seem to provide an opportunity for musicology, both music and the science that best represents it remain underrepresented in policy and scientific infrastructures. Part of the problem is the nature of musical artefacts themselves. Unlike tangible heritage fields such as archaeology and visual arts,...
57. An Alternate History of European Music: Translating Ernst Ferand's "Die Improvisation in der Musik"
10/07/2025, 13:10

In his 1938 book "Die Improvisation in der Musik," the Hungarian scholar and music educator Ernst Ferand (1887–1972) presents nothing less than an alternate history of European music. Through groundbreaking readings of primary and secondary sources, Ferand reconstructs a forgotten network of improvised practices that were central to the early development of European music (from plainchant, to...
107. The Role of Algeria in the Creation of Rossini’s “L’italiana in Algeri”: Historical and Political Perspectives
10/07/2025, 13:10

The aim of my paper is to contribute to the musicological debate surrounding the Mediterranean by focusing on the role of Algeria in the creation of Gioachino Rossini’s opera “L’italiana in Algeri” (1813). Specifically, I would like to draw the attention of the musicological community to the results of recent research that could lead us to reconsider existing theories regarding two aspects of...
91. Music Educational Projects in Palestinian Territories, past and future
10/07/2025, 18:00
202. Introduction to Study Session
David Irving (ICREA & IMF, CSIC)
11/07/2025, 09:00
215. Music and Mobility
Egberto Bermudez (Universidad Nacional de Colombia)
11/07/2025, 09:00
64. Plainchant in Nueva España: Liturgical Monody in Manuscripts from the Guatemalan Highlands
11/07/2025, 09:00

One of the most understudied yet potentially fruitful areas of research along the East-West axis connecting the Mediterranean and the Americas is the presence and use of plainchant in the newly conquered lands of sixteenth-century Nueva España. While many musical sources and collections remain unexamined, an increasing number of libraries are digitising plainchant manuscripts and prints,...
140. «Apenas había un joven, una señorita, un oficial mozo que no supiera y cantase de memoria el Misero Pargoleto». Comedia as a genre of opera reception of eighteenth-century Madrid
11/07/2025, 09:00

Italian opera quickly became integrated into the theatrical landscape of 18th-century Madrid, influencing local genres such as zarzuela and Spanish opera. These genres readily absorbed the musical conventions of dramma per musica and opera buffa. However, their hybrid nature either disrupted the rigid structure of Spanish theatre or led to only sporadic performances.
Fortunately, other...
177. ‘Bilbao Song’: Exoticism and Modernism in the Basque Amateur Scene during the ‘Jazz Age’ (1920-1930)
11/07/2025, 09:00

The economic and cultural progress of the Spanish Basque Country in the early 20th Century fostered a flourishing of all sorts of philarmonic activities. Notably, initiatives related to the so-called ‘Basque renaissance’ and its ensuing musical Nationalism (such as the compilation of folk songbooks or the development of vernacular operas) are well-documented, as well as other efforts to...
203. Individual Papers
Maria Alexandra Chua (UST Conservatory of Music)
11/07/2025, 09:10
176. Moresca and Sabir: Lost heritage of the Mediterranean Basin (remote)
11/07/2025, 09:20

Used from the era of the crusades till the first half of the 19th century, Sabir was a common language of the Mediterranean countries: a mix of French, Genoese, Venetian, Sicilian, Portuguese, Spanish and Arabic. Also known as Le Petit Moresque, it has been registered in a dictionary in 1830 and it has survived only in musical compositions called Moresche and Villanelle, till the last century....
115. Multiple identities between imperialism and nationalism
11/07/2025, 09:20

Pluriculturalism of Dalmatia, the coastal area of the Adriatic Sea, was a result of numerous rulers who brought their cultures, customs and music. In the early modern times, Dalmatia was under Venetian, Austrian, French, and again Austrian rule, while the sovereign Repubblica di Ragusa (The Republic of Ragusa, 1358–1808) was a tributary state of the Kingdom of Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, the...
132. Open the book! Repertory building, theory teaching and further relationships of the Split cathedral in the early Eighteenth Century
11/07/2025, 09:20

Music-theoretical works have long not been a specific subject of research in Croatia. As Stanislav Tuksar (2008) once concluded: «the proportions and then-contemporary needs for such music titles, both for education and for all other purposes, still remain a closed book for today’s researchers.» As we will see, this is certainly due to cataloguing issues, but also to historical separations of...
174. Between the Mediterranean and the New World: Music and Devotional Practices for Saint Benedict the Moor
11/07/2025, 09:40

Saint Benedict the Moor (1526-1589), a prominent figure in the devotional panorama of the early modern period, represents a bridge between the religious traditions of the Mediterranean and Afro-American spirituality. Born in San Fratello (Messina) to a family of African slaves, he became the object of a special cult that rapidly spread between Sicily and Spain, thanks to the efforts of the...
165. Children’s Lyric Companies: European and American Tours During the Spanish Restoration (1874-1931)
11/07/2025, 09:40

During the Spanish Restoration, a stable political climate and favorable social and cultural conditions facilitated the rise of children's opera and lyric theater companies, composed of young performers specializing in musical and theatrical genres such as zarzuela, operetta, and other productions specifically adapted to youthful voices. Notable Spanish directors of these companies included...
204. Discussion Panel
Jen-yen Chen (National Taiwan University – Taiwan)
11/07/2025, 10:30
100. The Tragedy of the (Musical) Commons: Addressing Issues in Orality and Ownership
11/07/2025, 10:30

Scholars and musicians alike have grappled with the conceptual nature of music copyright law since its idealistic, utilitarian inception. However, due to the nature of copyright law, many musical traditions are left out of the discussion since there are specific requirements in the process of copyrighting, because of the necessities that the work must be in a fixed, tangible medium and have a...
112. ‘Roman salutes’ and ethnic makeup in Clemente’s Fracassi’s Aida (1953)
11/07/2025, 10:30

Between 1946 and 1956, with most theatres in ruins after the war, approximately twenty opera-films, which proved to be box-office hits, were produced in Italy. Directed by Clemente Fracassi and presenting an abridged version of Verdi’s work, Aida (1953) was the first Italian opera-film in Technicolor, achieving successful distribution across Europe and the United States. Aida’s character was...
118. “Que sobre el canto llano se echassen otras voces”. The Repertoire of Polyphonic Introits in the Iberian Peninsula (16th-17th Centuries): Contexts, Sources, and Practices.
11/07/2025, 10:30

The Introit holds a prominent place in the liturgy of the Mass, as it is the introductory chant and establishes from the beginning the context of the feast. It is well known that the Hieronymite order granted special importance to plainchant, as evidenced by its regulation in various liturgical and musical sources, both printed and manuscript, as well as in documents regulating its practice...
37. A Nation at War: The Edition of Rigoletto’s Draft (1941) and Fascist Italy’s Struggle for Supremacy
11/07/2025, 10:50

In 1941, only eight months into the war, Italy was clearly becoming Germany’s lackey. In response, as historian Benjamin Martin (2016) highlights, Fascism sought to assert Italian cultural superiority over its militarily mightier ally. Benito Mussolini pursued this goal by ordering an ambitious propaganda campaign for the 40th anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi’s death, occurring that same year. A...
74. Early Music as a Way of Life: From Heritage to Market through Artistic Creation
11/07/2025, 10:50

The professional activity related to the performance of early music combines artistic and creative work with the study and dissemination of musical heritage, framed within a cultural consumption model led by the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs). This sector possesses a unique identity and dynamics that often conflict with traditional models of cultural creation and consumption. This...
216. Organs and Organ Music between Europe and the Americas
Egberto Bermudez (Universidad Nacional de Colombia)
11/07/2025, 11:00
59. Performing an Early Mediterranean. Repertoires and Historicities
11/07/2025, 11:10

The Mediterranean not only challenges musicologists to explore innovative research trajectories that go beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries, it also inspires musicians to cross-cultural artistic collaboration. Adding aspects of performance and music business to a discussion of the Early Mediterranean as a musicological thought model, the focus of the paper is on the market segment of...
29. Sounds of the Empire: Music Exoticism in 1930s Luce Films
11/07/2025, 11:10

Istituto Luce's documentaries and newsreels played a pivotal role in the colonial propaganda of Fascist Italy during the 1930s. The films of the Luce's Photographic Department for East Africa, which was established in Asmara at the onset of the Ethiopian War, exemplify colonialist tendencies that would subsequently become the stylistic hallmark of Italian cinematic productions for decades. The...
205. Final Discussion & Administrative Matters
David Irving (ICREA & IMF, CSIC)
11/07/2025, 11:30
182. Knowing the Other: Sounds and Music in Travelogues and the Reception of the Exotic
Paola Dessì (Università di Padova), Elena Murarotto (Università di Padova), Andrea Pintimalli (Università di Padova), Chiara Casarin (Università di Padova)
11/07/2025, 12:30
  • Paola Dessì, Elena Murarotto, Andrea Pintimalli: Global Sound Ecosystems and Stage Exoticism: The Echos App and the Research on the Exotic Reception in Venetian Opera
  • Andrea Pintimalli: Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s Riḥla: a musical and historical-anthropological interpretation
  • Elena Murarotto: Giovanni Miani’s ethnographic legacy along the Nile: travel diary, illustrations and musical instruments...
217. La SEdeM al servicio de la musicología española: contribuciones y retos
Cristina Urchueguia (Universität Bern), Francisco Rodilla León (Universidad de Extremadura), John Griffiths (University of Melbourne - Australia), María José de la Torre Molina (Universidad de Málaga), Nieves Pascual León (Palau de la Música de València)
11/07/2025, 12:30

Esta mesa redonda presenta las principales líneas de actuación de la Sociedad Española de Musicología (SEdeM) en su compromiso con el impulso y la difusión de la investigación musicológica. Se abordarán las actividades desarrolladas en los últimos años —como las publicaciones en distintos formatos, la convocatoria de premios, la edición discográfica, la organización de congresos y los trabajos...
218. Music and Dance in Transatlantic Circulation, 16th–20th Centuries
Alejandro Vera (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), Javier Marín-López (Universidad de Jaén, España), Álvaro Torrente (Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales, Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Beatriz Martínez del Fresno (Universidad de Oviedo)
11/07/2025, 12:30

This session is framed within the emerging field of Transatlantic Music Studies, an interdisciplinary approach that examines the circulation of music, musicians, and musical and choreographic practices across the Atlantic from the fifteenth century to the present. Rooted in Atlantic history, this field explores how music was shaped by transoceanic exchanges and, in turn, how it contributed to...
62. Music in Motion: On Music’s Mobility in French Musical Films of the 1940s (remote)
11/07/2025, 12:30

Both the (transnational) genre of the musical film in the 1940s and the cultural-historical discussion of
the attached production contexts represent desiderata in musicological research. Using the example of the flourishing transnational musical film production of the 1940s that was located in the Mediterranean region of southern France, the contribution sheds light to the multiple...
128. Rhythm as cross-cultural embodiment and representation
11/07/2025, 12:30

This paper will illustrate how different cultural contexts contributed to shape the rhythmic variety of European music from the late 15th to the early 18th century, connecting some of its features to the Islamic world (from the Persian-Arabic matrix up to Turkish hegemony) and West Africa. Particular rhythmic patterns, with asymmetric, syncopated or hemiolic characteristics, will be described...
46. Spain and Its Music in the Noticiero ICAIC Latinoamericano (1960–1990): Identity, Resistance, and Cooperation
11/07/2025, 12:50

This study investigates the musical representation of Spain in the cinematic news reports of the Noticiero ICAIC Latinoamericano (NIL) between 1960 and 1990, examining how music articulates discourses on identity, resistance, and cooperation. By mapping the Bitácora del Cine Cubano III and conducting a detailed quantitative analysis, the study identifies news items related to Spain featured in...
116. Travelling Songs in the Fifteenth Century
11/07/2025, 12:50

Of the surprises that arose while completing my long-planned book Art Songs of the Burgundian Era, 1415–1480, the greatest was the number of the most widely copied songs of those years that are plainly transmitted with the wrong text. Already in the 1950s Sylvia Kenney had shown that Walter Frye’s Ave regina celorum, by far the most widely copied song of the 1450s, almost certainly began life...
88. Cantiga 121 and a Founding Legend of the Rosary: Its Journey in Song, Sermon, and Print from Late Medieval Spain to Early Modern Mexico (remote)
11/07/2025, 13:10

This paper examines a founding legend of the rosary that likely originated from the Cantigas de Santa Maria (late thirteenth century) and circulated in northeastern Spain before migrating directly from Valencia to Mexico City in the late 1500s. At its core is the rosary, an instrument of Catholic devotion associated with the Dominican Order, which played a key role in promoting its use through...
150. Classical Music on Portuguese National Television or how to democratize after the revolution (remote)
11/07/2025, 13:10

"Some music may initially be perceived as elitist but can later shed that perception due to the possibilities offered by television", affirmed João de Freitas Branco in the music dissemination program Melomania, aired in 1978 on Portuguese National Television (RTP). Through this statement, Freitas Branco expressed the intention of dismantling the elitist perception of "Classical Music" and...
63. El orientalismo musical español como expresión de sexualidades no normativas a principios del siglo XX
12/07/2025, 09:00

A comienzos del siglo XX, la sublimación de las antiguas culturas “orientales” como Arcadias en las que proyectar formas de sexualidad no normativas constituyó una de las principales vías para la expresión de la diferencia homosexual en la música, las artes visuales y la literatura. Por “Oriente” se entendía entonces Oriente Próximo, el Lejano Oriente, el Norte de África y las antiguas...
86. Giovanni Bottesini (1821 – 1889): a Global Mediterranean Life
12/07/2025, 09:00

As a performer, opera conductor and composer, Giovanni Bottesini was a key figure in the nineteenth-century traveling Italian opera performing circuit. His career is exemplary of the transnational entanglements of musical culture in a century that brought highly accelerated land and sea travel. Bottesini’s engagements, performances, and show how music culture became increasingly global. These...
28. Haydn and the 5-string Cello
12/07/2025, 09:00
Free paper
Organology

In spite of its enduring appeal to audiences, the technical demands and the high tessature of the solo part of Joseph Haydn's Cello Concerto in D major (Hob VIIb:2) have made it a trial by fire for modern cellists. However, the origins of the piece have resisted musicological investigation for nearly two centuries.
In the early 20th century, Hans Volkmann and Donald Tovey argued that the...
70. Pre- and post-dramatic approaches in today's early Baroque opera productions in Europe
12/07/2025, 09:00
Free paper
Opera: Dramaturgy

Recently, some opera productions have increasingly appeared to be “curated” by stage directors, even more so than in the tradition of Regietheater (director's theater). This trend, first noted by Jelena Novak, involves directors assembling segments from musical history or arias from classical operas and “curating” them into a new creation. I illustrate this trend through the 2024 pastiche...
95. Remapping València in the Festival Borderlands: Musical Repertoire and the Reconfiguration of the Everyday
12/07/2025, 09:00

In festivals, where time and space are experienced in ways that exceed everyday temporal and geographical boundaries, the border is not simply a two-dimensional dividing line cordoning off locals from the rest of the world. Through their aesthetic and performative modes, festivals straddle the normative borders that frame everyday life to produce a festival borderland, where new modes of...
162. Echoes of the Mare Nostrum: Sonic Performativities and Identity Encoding in the Soundspaces of the Crown of Aragon
12/07/2025, 09:20

During the Early Modern period, processions disrupted daily work activities, integrating ordinary time with moments of closing workshops to engage in devotional practices. In the cities of the Crown of Aragon connected to the Mediterranean, a common feature was the prevalence of processions. In this context, cathedrals functioned as vertical acoustic epicentres, emitting sonic signals that...
104. Heterogeneous Sounds and Cross-Cultural Soundscapes in East-West Dialogue: A Study of the Opera Marco Polo (1996–2024)
12/07/2025, 09:20
Free paper
Opera: Dramaturgy

Abstract
This study examines the cross-cultural dynamics and shifting power structures in musical theater through a comparative analysis of Tan Dun’s Marco Polo (1996) and the 2024 Sino-Italian co-production of the same title. In the context of globalization, cultural exchange remains conditioned by historical power structures and established narrative frameworks. As an emblematic figure of...
36. Silencing the other. The prohibition of morisco rituals, sounds and processions in 16th century Kingdom of València
12/07/2025, 09:20

After the conquest of the Valencian Muslim territories by the troops of King James I of Aragon and the creation of the new Kingdom of València in the 13th century, many were the orders and legislation for the Muslim population that decided to stay in the new Cristian territories, the Mudejares. In origin, these laws where somewhat permissive, and the Mudejares could practice their faith and...
156. Study of Lexicography and Musical Terminology of Ophicleide in the 19th Century
12/07/2025, 09:20
Free paper
Organology

The global trade in aerophones grew exponentially in the 19th century due to the creation of new models, the adaptation of chromatic playing mechanisms, the expansion of military and civilian bands, the dissemination of teaching manuals and the diffusion of specific repertoires. These new aerophones and their repertoires were incorporated into the musical groups of several countries during...
185. Origins and spread of marching bands in Southern Italy (1800-1870): sources, practices, circulation.
12/07/2025, 09:40

The paper focuses on the musical practices in southern Italy - civil and military - of ‘fanfares’ and the first ‘bands’ between 1800 and 1870, indicating the relevance of their ‘sound’ and ‘colour’ even within a written and cultured tradition.
The reconnaissance of musical sources and archival documentation, carried out on a sample basis, shows the predominant role that wind orchestras played...
48. Satyagraha in Sound: The Intersection of Glass's Minimalism, Indian Colonial History, and Hindu Mythology (remote)
12/07/2025, 09:40
Free paper
Opera: Dramaturgy

My paper reveals the profound impact of Philip Glass’s portrayal of the concept of “Satyagraha” (“truth force”) that shaped a movement that ultimately led India to independence in 1947. The term was coined by a figure synonymous with both Indian and world history, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, or "Mahatma" ("great-souled") Gandhi. His contributions to the Indian freedom movement have transcended...
125. The Barber-Surgeons of the Brazilian Empire: Another Side of Slavery
12/07/2025, 09:40

Slavery was the official mode of production in Brazil from the occupation of the territory by Pedro Álvares Cabral in April 1500 until its official abolition in May 1888. For nearly 400 uninterrupted years, despite the violence inflicted upon approximately four million enslaved Black people, the interactions between Whites, Blacks, and Indigenous peoples across various social strata...
166. Transcultural instruments from Africa to Europe: a contribution to the cultural history of timpani
12/07/2025, 09:40
Free paper
Organology

In the transformation of kettledrums from military to ceremonial and parade uses, serving as a symbolic and universalist display of political power, the role played by African mediation has not been sufficiently studied. This role has been obscured by the fact that the transition of these instruments to the Western world has always been analyzed through the lens of Near Eastern mediation. The...
127. Misa Aguinaldo and the Villancico in the Philippines: Tracing Cultural Flows and Transculturation from the Mediterranean to the Far East
12/07/2025, 11:00

The celebration of Christmas in the Philippines, with its accompanying rituals and music, is widely regarded as as one of the longest and most festive traditions in the world. As a transcultural product of Spanish colonial engagement, the traditions and music of Philippine Christmas embody a complex interplay of cultural flows that trace their origins from the Mediterranean to the Far East....
20. Processos actuals de patrimonialització i folklorització en la música tradicional valenciana: dos casos d’estudi
Àlec Arribas (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
12/07/2025, 11:00

-Versió en valencià-

La preservació de les denominades “músiques de tradició oral” ha sigut possible, en part, gràcies a la presència que encara hi ha en el passat de moltes societats de materials tradicionals que romanen disponibles per emprar-se en la pràctica musical contemporània (Hobsbawm, 1983). Alhora, la digitalització i la globalització han permés repensar les formes de...
109. Redes de intercambio musical en la Hispanoamérica colonial (Musical Exchange Networks in Colonial Hispano-America)
Alberto Hurtado Giménez, Giovanna Caruso Eluchans, Gladys Andrea Zamora Pineda, Javier Marín López, Omar Morales Abril, Álvaro Mota Medina
12/07/2025, 11:00

From the conquest of the Americas and the establishment of the viceroyalty system, commercial, migratory, and cultural processes were altered, a phenomenon commonly referred to as an early form of globalization. This led to the emergence of new dynamics that not only connected Europe and the Mediterranean world with the Americas but also, from the very beginning, fostered exchanges and...
102. The 1580 Culture Quake in Spain
12/07/2025, 11:00

In Spanish music history, the beginning of the Baroque represents an unsolved problem. Literary critics recognize a major break around 1580 (Montesinos 1959), as reflected in two closely related novelties: the rise of the comedia nueva, and the flourishing of the romance nuevo. I argue that this disruption was a broader cultural transformation that also involved music and whose key feature was...
99. Blown fifths, visual equidistance, and the genesis of Sundanese scales and modes in West Java, Indonesia
12/07/2025, 11:20

It is well known that pioneer ethnomusicologist Jaap Kunst collaborated with Erich von Hornbostel to validate Hornbostel’s expansive blasquintentheorie (“theory of blown fifths”), which posited a common basis in the overtone series for a variety of Asian tonal systems, using Kunst’s tuning measurements from Java as examplars. It is less well known that in West Java, Jaap Kunst collaborated...
131. Musical epigraphies as historical musical sources. Museumization as a proposal for the heritage preservation of musical epigraphies
12/07/2025, 11:20

Musical epigraphies are historical musical sources written or inscribed on a hard or semi-hard support that endures over time. Musical epigraphies as historical sources are of utmost importance for religious studies, as they were part of a mode of cultural, social, and artistic expression created by Christian communities in their acts of worship and rituals. These are a pending case study...
163. Questioning Connectivity and Chronology in Global Music History
12/07/2025, 11:20

A key objective of global history has been to highlight connections and comparisons across vast distances and time-periods. Global music history shares that tendency, but also embraces relativistic studies of diverse local musical pasts that promote the de-centring of traditional historical-musicological focus. Within both fields, emphases on connectivity reflect an intricate relationship with...
25. Women Music Historians in Greece (19th–21st Century): Interconnections and Influences
12/07/2025, 11:40

The historiography of music in Greece, dating back to the late 19th century, has been profoundly shaped by the significant contributions of women such as Athina Seremeti (late 19th–early 20th century), Avra Theodoropoulou (1880–1963), and Kaiti Romanou (1939–2020). Each of these scholars introduced groundbreaking advancements to music historiography: Seremeti was the first to translate a...
92. “As if he were not the same person”: Schenker on Casals as cellist, conductor, and businessman (remote)
12/07/2025, 11:40

In diary entries dating 1926–29, the Viennese music theorist Heinrich Schenker displays a keen interest in Pablo Casals, reflecting on his activities as both a cellist and a conductor. These writings demonstrate a conflicted view. Schenker’s response to Casals’s performance of Bach’s Third Cello Suite was uncharacteristically effusive, commending the cellist’s “incomparable command of the...
105. Artists' Piano Rolls: Circulation and Exchange of Musical Repertoires in Spain at the Beginning of the 20th Century
12/07/2025, 12:30

This paper discusses the research carried out as part of the project Artist's Piano Rolls in Spain, led by Lourdes Rebollo at the Universidad Internacional de Valencia.
Artist’s piano rolls are part of the history of recorded music. They provide valuable information about early recording technologies and performance practices, as well as the musical and cultural tastes of early 20th century...
168. From Subversive Marginality to Hard-Right Populism: The Shifting Politics of “Arabesk” in Contemporary Turkey
12/07/2025, 12:30

“Arabesk,” a music genre that blends Turkish folk music with Arabic influences, has periodically dominated public discussion in Turkey since its emergence in the 1960s. The genre has always implied a relationship to the ruling elite: once heavily disdained by the bureaucratic center, it was later co-opted for populist ambitions. A robust academic discourse on arabesk is found in the...
35. In Pursuit of a Sound Future: Industriousness in Maltese Popular Songs of the 1970s
12/07/2025, 12:50

After its independence in 1964, Malta, a small Mediterranean island country, embarked on an extensive economic programme to diversify the island’s economy. This intensified in the 1970s under the socialist Labour government, which promoted the value of industriousness ('bżulija' in Maltese) as a key value for the country’s economic progress. In parallel with these economic and political...
93. Two Nineteenth-Century Modinha Songbooks from Brazil: Transatlantic Destinies
12/07/2025, 12:50

The sentimental modinha stands as one of the most traditional song-forms of the Portuguese-speaking world. In the present paper, however, I shall highlight two nineteenth-century modinha songbooks that are currently held neither in Brazil nor in Portugal. Rather, though produced in Rio de Janeiro, the songbooks are presently housed at the Robert Bosch Foundation in Stuttgart and the Spanish...
183. The birth of the French Dauphin (1729) in the eastern Mediterranean: Dynastic festivals as multicultural festivities?
12/07/2025, 18:30

This paper aims to investigate a series of unexploited official reports of the celebrations of the birth of the son of Louis XV (September 1729), originating from a dozen of embassies and consulates in the eastern Mediterranean, from Thessaloniki and Istanbul to Saïda and Rameh.
These festivals were ordered by the King and consisted of a twofold series of events: thanksgiving events –...
58. Muslim ambassadors in the theatre and music of the Spanish Golden Age. An applied research for a contemporary re-reading.
12/07/2025, 18:50

One of the lesser-known aspects of Golden Age culture is the presence of Muslim ambassadors in theatre, not only as characters in plays but also as spectators. This proposal for applied research stems from the project Mediterranean Intercultural Diplomacy of the Spanish Monarchy (DIPLOINMED). Building on the study of theatrical and musical performances attended by Muslim ambassadors, this...
81. The emergence of the music press in France and the war of the first music periodicals
12/07/2025, 19:10

My paper looks at the world's very first music periodicals from an editorial point of view. To do this, I will look at three major players in music publishing in France at the end of the 17th century: the printer Ballard, the ‘Mercure galant’ - the first musical periodical - and the composer Bertrand de Bacilly, who used the ‘Mercure galant’ as a forum to defend his interests against Ballard,...
143. Between Jewish Tradition and European Modernism: A study of Lodovico Rocca's "Il Dibuk" and its Cultural Context
Free paper

“Between Two Worlds: The Dybbuk” by Sëmen An-Ski is certainly one of the most important theatrical texts in the Yiddish language and became highly successful in the 1920s and 1930s, thanks to travelling theatre companies (Habimah, Vilner Troupe etc.) that brought it to the stage across Europe.
Numerous musicians were captivated by it, including the Turin composer Lodovico Rocca, who was the...
106. Music and Dance in Transatlantic Circulation, 16th–20th Centuries

This session is framed within the emerging field of Transatlantic Music Studies, an interdisciplinary approach that examines the circulation of music, musicians, and musical and choreographic practices across the Atlantic from the fifteenth century to the present. Rooted in Atlantic history, this field explores how music was shaped by transoceanic exchanges and, in turn, how it contributed to...
51. Music and Discursive Context for a Deconstruction of the Nationalist Myth: New Visions on Criollismo in Nineteenth Century Cuba

Nationalist thought has constituted a principal axis of musicology in Latin America since its inception, and thus has exerted a considerable influence on the respective musical histories that were created during the initial decades of the twentieth century. It would be reasonable to posit that Cuba has not been immune to this phenomenon, particularly in the wake of the Cuban Revolution in...
126. National Anthems of the Mediterranean Area
Study Session
Study Session 126

Spain's national anthem is one of the oldest and long-lasting in the world. Its origins pre-date the impressive blossoming of a 'genre' started by French Revolution. Therefore, if the second half of the 18th century can be assumed as the starting point of this kind of production, the two-and-a-half centuries elapsed since then have witnessed, especially in Europe, the flowering of a repertory...
159. Neither East nor West: Fazıl Say and the Contested Soundscapes of Modern Türkiye - Rethinking Mediterranean Musical Histories and Postcolonial Legacies
Free paper
S2

From a young age, Turkish composer and pianist Fazıl Say has navigated a complex musical landscape shaped by Mediterranean cultural encounters, Ottoman legacies, and postcolonial tensions. In a 1979 children's TV program on the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), hosted by Zuhal Olcay, the eight-year-old Say performed his early composition, What the Piano Told Me, live. This modest...
206. Origins and Legacy: 20 Years of AVAMUS
Marta Mechó Fenollosa (AVAMUS)

This first part will feature a series of short presentations by key figures in the history of AVAMUS — Ramón Canut Rebull (founding president), Daniel Vidal Ribero (first secretary), Salvador Astruells Moreno (editor of Quadrivium), and Mario Masó Agut (current president). They will reflect on the foundation of the association, its development over the last two decades, major milestones,...
207. Perspectives from Outside: Explaining AVAMUS to the World
Marta Mechó Fenollosa (AVAMUS)

In this second part, Cristina Urchueguía and Andrea García Torres will engage in a dialogue exploring how AVAMUS is perceived from beyond the local and regional spheres. They will discuss the role of the association within broader academic and cultural networks, and how its mission, identity, and work might be made more visible and accessible to international scholars and institutions.
75. «Partiranno col vapore della 'Dalmatia'»: Some Remarks on the Circulation of Opera and Operatic Companies in the Eastern Adriatic Theatres (1861-1918)
Free paper

The archives of the Istrian and Dalmatian coast have recently revealed an immense wealth of documentary material related to the operatic activities of the coastal theatres spanning the 19th and 20th centuries. The theatres of Pula, Rijeka, Zadar, Šibenik, Split and Dubrovnik can be unified in a common discourse, since they were linked by shared practices, procedures and organisational habits -...
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