CALL FOR PAPERS!

International Bilingual Conference

The European Salon: Nineteenth-century Salonmusik

2-4 October 2015, National University of Ireland, Maynooth

Keynote speakers: Professor Susan Youens, Professor Glenn Stanley, and Professor Harald Krebs

As socio-cultural institutions, salons had a great political, artistic and scientific impact on nineteenth-century history. The typical salon sociability provided a unique opportunity for artists of varied social and cultural backgrounds to share their knowledge and skills on a semi-public platform. In fact the attempt at overcoming social, religious and educational limitations in the salon was a singular phenomenon of the time. While the purposes of nineteenth-century salons were diverse, all of them had in common the ubiquity of music. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to re-evaluate the significance of both the broad and diverse category of music performed in and/or composed for the salon and the extra-musical functions of the salon within the context of the nineteenth-century socio-cultural discourse.

We invite abstracts for individual 20-minute papers by both academic scholars and performers in either English or German; for themed panel sessions (comprising three individual papers); and for roundtable sessions (up to six people, each presenting a position paper, followed by a discussion). Considering the practical nature of the overall topic, we especially welcome proposals for lecture recitals and other performative forms of presentation.

Proposed research areas include but are not limited to:

• The nineteenth-century European salon as a social forum and its artistic output as a social document;
• The salon as a special performative opportunity for women;
• A re-classification of composers specialising in Salonmusik and composers of European art music performing in European salons;
• The role of music during the Biedermeier period;
• Case studies of specific nineteenth-century European salons and/or their attendees;
• The relationship between salonieres, attendees, performers, publishers and/or reviewers, i.e. the relationship between the private, the semi-public and the public domains;
• Publishers of Salonmusik and their contribution to the popularity of the genre;
• Virtuosity and quasi-virtuosic Salonmusik versus dilettantism;
• A re-evaluation of art-forms typically performed in salons, and their impact on the musical repertoire of the nineteenth century and beyond;
• Analyses of typical Salonmusik and works performed in salons such as fantasias, impromptus, etudes, transcriptions, variations, polonaises, ballades, waltzes, boleros, mazurkas and others.

Abstracts of c300 words, along with a short biography of no more than 150 words and an outline of the technology needed for the presentation, should be sent in a word-compatible format by Friday, 6 February 2015 to 19thcenturysalon@nuim.ie. Successful applicants will be notified by mid-March 2015.

The organising committee includes Brigitte Bark (NUIM), Anja Bunzel (NUIM), Dr Lorraine Byrne Bodley (NUIM), Dr Patrick Devine (NUIM), Dr Alison Hood (NUIM), Dr Aisling Kenny (DkIT), Barbora Kubečková (NUIM), and Dr Wolfgang Marx (UCD).

For further details see International Bilingual Conference.