XIV. International Conference - CONTEXTUALITY OF MUSICOLOGY
CONTEXTUALITY OF MUSICOLOGY – What, How, Why and Because
XIV International Conference of the Department of Musicology,
Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade
Faculty of Music, Belgrade, 24 to 27 October 2018
Celebrating 70th anniversary the Department of Musicology of the Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade, is pleased to announce its Fourteenth International Conference on the topic of Contextuality of Musicology – What, How, Why and Because. The interest for the contextuality of musicology (e.g. M. Veselinović-Hofman, Contextuality of Musicology, New Sound, 1998, practise of the interdisciplinary musicology, showed itself a long time ago at our Department of Musicology, and reflects the awareness of multiple approaches to the interdisciplinary musicology, as well as an importance of integrating knowledge of other disciplines concerning music into the musicological discourse.
It can be said that musicology, in itself, is a multi- and interdisciplinary science regardless of its specifics or, more precisely, a synthetic science that combines the widest possible spectrum of special studies, whereby not one science can remain in its pure state due to constant and inevitable permeations, transmissions and fusions, thus abolishing the conventional division into humanities, social and natural sciences. In fact, during the past decades, the music itself was increasingly turning into the medial (median), intermediary (acting as an intermediate agent between two or more things) and mediatory (pertaining to mediation) field of widely varied interests – social, economic, cultural-political, etc., and aspects of consideration and research –sociological, cultural, philosophical, aesthetic, psychological, physical, physiological, neurological, etc.
However, what is essential is that musicology, whether as historical musicology, or as systematic musicology, has its status of an intermedium (pertaining to the matter that helps transforming one matter into the other, or the fusion of other two or more matters into one), that is, one of its basic characteristics in the context of moving almost complete scientific apparatus at the moment when music is at the heart of the problem. In other words, its natural position of an intermedium enables musicology, thanks to its basic scientific tools – from establishing a fact, which is a historical and/or analytical point of departure, to its contextualization as a scholarly goal – to be the only one in all crucial moments in any music research that could make a vertical cut through all strata of dealing with music. Namely, musicology, therefore, from the very moment of its establishment, turned to the problem of the context.
The everlasting question of the role of outside-music disciplines in musicology shows that thinking about music in context, is not really a new occurrence, but, the question of relations between musical and outside-musical disciplines (regarding the way of setting the thesis, process and type of argumentation, and way of making conclusions) definitely is new, as well as the degree of intensity of their participation in critical, documented and creative contextual musicological questioning and exposure.
Both as a music historian who strives to explain the gist of the sense and the meaning of the events forming history, and as a musicologist pursuing the hermeneutical work which, admittedly, can never reach the ‘true’ meaning of a musical work but only approximate this meaning asymptotically, we think that it is necessary always to keep in mind the ‘call’ of historicity. For the historicity of the place of ‘narrative’, to which ‘narrative is indebted’, is an important context of the credibility of the what and the how, of the validity of establishing and comprehension of the why, and the meaningfulness of the hermeneutical because(from Interview with M. Veselinović-Hofman, Living One’s Own Thought Experience with Music and Musicology, New Sound, 41, 2013,
Open to the contributions not only from musicological and music field, but from different fields of humanities and arts, the conference aims at contemporary re/interpretations and re/discoveries of the crucial points of contextuality of musicology.
The above and the following few suggestions, are offered as starting-points for consideration:
- context in music/musicology
- music/musicology in context
- contextuality of musicology and (post-)historical, as well as analytical fact
- contextuality of musicology and musicological aesthetics and poetics of music (from what is autonomously musical in a work to what is latently semantic in it, in a way that implies or stimulates personal insights, and/or personal existence in a musical work, as a sort of hermeneutical completion – cf. Interview with M. Veselinović-Hofman)
- contextuality of musicology and contemporary creation – current phenomena in and outside music: technological and compositional-technical innovations, various efforts in media, style and theory, the possibility of contextual insight, necessarily related to the problem area of this here and now (cf. Interview with M. Veselinović-Hofman)
- contextuality of musicology and performing
- contextuality of musicology and media – mixed media, polymedia, intermedia
- contextuality of musicology and technology – human, non-human
- contextuality of musicology and language, as well as writing
- contextuality of musicology and subject(ivity)
- contextuality of musicology and utopia, (post)delusion, nostalgia, melancholy, and/or activism, technological progress
- contextuality of musicology and interdisciplinary challenges, humanities
Academics of all fields of musicology are invited, including those dealing with music from the position of other disciplines.
Please submit your paper topic (including the thematic area as listed above) to Ivana Petković or Radoš Mitrović or Stefan Cvetković at e-mail address:
The submission deadline isMay 31, 2018.
Please include your short biography and an abstract of 250 words. You will be notified by June 15, 2018 if your topic has been accepted.
The official language of the conference is English. It is possible to deliver papers also in German, French, Russian, and Serbian, but the authors are kindly requested to provide translation in English.
The time limit for the presentation and discussion of your paper is set at 30 minutes in total. Selected papers presented at the conference will be published in the proceedings.
Conference fee: Both participation at the Conference and the publication of a text whose topic has been accepted by the Program Committee are conditional upon the payment of the participation fee. The travel expenses, per diem expenses and hotel accommodation are to be covered by the participants.
Payment instructions:The fee can be paid on the spot (90€) or with PayPal (early bird,70 €).
Students fee is 50 €.
Participants will be notified about PayPal payments instructions.
Keynote Speakers:
Richard Taruskin, PhD
Professor Emeritus
University of California, Berkley, Department of Music
Mirjana Veselinović-Hofman, PhD
Full Time Professor – Retired
University of Arts in Belgrade, Faculty of Music
Program Committee:
Marcel Cobussen,PhD, Leiden University, Faculty of Humanities, Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
Marija Masnikosa, PhD, Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade
Vesna Mikić, PhD, Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade
Ivana Perković, PhD, Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade
Tijana Popović Mlađenović, PhD, Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade
Nico Schüler,PhD, Texas State University, San Marcos
Leon Stefanija, PhD, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana
Ana Stefanović, PhD, Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade
Dragana Stojanović-Novičić, PhD, Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade
Chris Walton, PhD,University of Stellenbosch
Organizing Committee:
Stefan Cvetković, PhD candidate, Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade
Marina Marković, PhD candidate, Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade
Marija Masnikosa, PhD, Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade
Vesna Mikić, PhD, Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade
Ivana Miladinović-Prica, PhD candidate, Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade
Radoš Mitrović, PhD, Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade
Ivana Perković, PhD, Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade
Ivana Petković, PhD candidate, Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade
Tijana Popović Mlađenović, PhD, Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade
Ana Stefanović, PhD, Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade