Call for Papers: Re-creation: Musical Reception of Classical Antiquity

Call for Papers
Re-creation: Musical Reception of Classical Antiquity
A conference at the University of Iowa, October 27-29, 2011

Conference organizers: Robert Ketterer (University of Iowa), Andrew Simpson (Catholic University), Greg Hand (University of Iowa)

The power of music in Greek and Roman myth to move gods, men and even inanimate objects, and the descriptions of music in the imaginative and theoretical literature of antiquity, have inspired musicians since the Middle Ages to interpret and transform the ancient experience. Composers, librettists, and song writers have responded to the passions of the ancients in every available genre and style of musical expression. This conference will explore ways that vocal and instrumental music throughout the world has received and recreated the art and culture of the Greeks and Romans. A concomitant goal of this conference is to bring together artists and scholars in many fields – classics, music, theater, film – to engage in meaningful dialogue about the ways in which classical antiquity informs and shapes their own work. Presenters whose specialty is classics are asked to emphasize musical examples in support of their arguments; specialists in music and other performing arts are requested to focus their presentations on the ancient paradigms that have influenced the music of their particular field.

Conference activities will include lectures, paper sessions, live concerts, and a screening of silent films accompanied by live music composed by Andrew Simpson. Speakers who have already committed to the project include Mary-Kay Gamel (UC Santa Cruz), Simon Goldhill (King’s College, Cambridge), Wendy Heller (Princeton University), Jon Solomon (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), and Reinhard Strohm (Wadham College, Oxford). Concerts will include a performance by Iowa’s Center for New Music, and the first opera for which music survives, Jacopo Peri’s Euridice, premiered in Florence in 1600.

Scholars and artists interested in participating are asked to submit abstracts on relevant subjects that include, but need not be limited to:

* Stage music (e.g., opera, musical theater, incidental music)
* Choral and vocal music
* Instrumental music (e.g., chamber, orchestral, wind ensemble)
* Music for film, including silent film
* Electronic and digital music
* Interactive media including music
* Popular and folk music
* World (i.e., non-Western) musical responses to classical antiquity
* Social or political uses of antiquity in musical settings
* Ancient music theory and modern musical practice

The University of Iowa Classics Department’s journal Syllecta Classica will publish a collection of refereed papers from this conference. Syllecta Classica is available through Project Muse.

One-page abstracts should be sent as an electronic attachment to Professor Robert Ketterer, University of Iowa by April 15, 2011 (robert-ketterer at uiowa dot edu).

Brusherd, M. [IllinoisClassics] Call for papers: Music/Classical Antiquity, Univ. of Iowa, October 27-29, 2011. Illinois Classics listserv (illinoisclassics@yahoogroups.com, 27 Feb 2011).