The 40th anniversary conference will be held in Vilnius, on 17–20 October 2007. This forum for Baltic musicologists, organised for the first time in cooperation with the International Musicological Society, represents both the traditions upheld by the organisers and the search for new future prospects. The intersection of past reflections and future insights is also mirrored by the title of the conference Poetics and Politics of Place in Music. The conference will be attended by the musicologists from 13 European countries and Israel. They will discuss the relationship of music and performance practices within the social and cultural contexts; cultural identities of music and musical soundscapes; representations of the national, local, global and other aspects in music, as well as the challenges posed by global migration and cultural mixture and the influence thereof upon the contemporary musical culture. A special session in the conference programme, entitled Homage à Vytautas Landsbergis: Music, Culture, Politics, will be devoted to the notable Lithuanian musicologist and politician Vytautas Landsbergis (b.1932). The forgotten pages of Lithuanian musical modernism will be brought to light in the special event commemorating the anniversaries of Jeronimas Kačinskas (1907–2005), the representative of interwar Lithuanian avant-garde and the father of national quarter-tone music, and Lithuanian modernist composer Jonas Nabažas (1907–2002). During the gathering held in memory of eminent researcher and promoter of Lithuanian music culture Ona Narbutienė (1930–2007), the chamber works by these composers will be performed for the first time in Lithuania, along with the presentation of unpublished fragments from Jonas Nabažas’ Diaries.
The Baltic musicological conferences began in 1967, as annual meetings of an independent network for Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian musicological communities. Descending from the Baltic Weeks, held during the interwar period until 1941, these conferences have now evolved into a truly international platform for cultural dialogue and collaboration. Over forty years they have been migrating between Riga, Vilnius and Tallinn, thereby enriching local musicological traditions and reaching wider international acceptance. At the same time they served as a medium and tool of Baltic cultural resistance during the years of political and ideological oppression. In post-Soviet years the Baltic musicological conferences opened up to wider international context as a forum for musicologists specialising in all kinds of inderdisciplinary and cross-cultural studies.
The conference’s programme committee:
Algirdas Ambrazas (Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre)
Jonas Bruveris (Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre)
Gražina Daunoravičienė (Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre)
Lyudmila Kovnatskaya (St Petersburg Conservatory and IMS)
Adam Krims (University of Nottingham)
Helmut Loos (University of Leipzig)
Raymond Monelle (University of Edinburgh)
Eero Tarasti (University of Helsinki)
For the full conference programme search here.
Musicologists' section inf.
