Venue: Biblioteca Histórica de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Calle del Noviciado, 3, 28015 Madrid

Definitive program: See PDF

23-24 November 2017

*Introduction
This conference proposes a study of the concert as a social, cultural and musical phenomenon during a period in which Spanish music particularly flourished: from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries.
Since the beginning of music historiography, music history has been conceived as a succession of composers, performers and institutions. This vision has only changed in recent decades, owing to the influence of cultural studies and anthropology, which defended the social and cultural context of musical activity, and to the influence of performance studies, which demonstrated a glaring absence in music history: that of the performance of the work. Hence, the meaning of musical works is variable and is susceptible to a continuous process of (re-)creation and change through the many historical interpretations it may be subject to.
As a consequence of this change of paradigm, the concert and the performance it encompasses have now become the centre of the musicological debate, thus substantially altering their position in music history. The concert is no longer a subsidiary event that attests to a composer’s or a work’s trajectory; instead, it is a central event in which music history itself takes place, so to speak, since the musical work only comes to life through performance.
This conference aims to contribute to this paradigm change, promoting the study of the various historical, productive, performative and ideological aspects of the concert in Spain over a wide chronological time span.

*Proposals
Proposals for papers (20 minutes) on the following topics are welcome:
- History and meaning of key concepts: concert, public sphere, private sphere, market, audience(s)
- Types of concerts and access systems
- Concert spaces: salon, church, court, concert hall; physical and spatial dimension of listening to music; architecture and conditioning of spaces
- Concert organization and management: patronage systems, from the patron to the agent, organizers’ profiles, commercial and dissemination aspects
- The role of music criticism: journalistic and discursive approaches, ideological and aesthetic agendas, the profession of the music critic
- The performer: profiles (virtuoso, amateur, etc.); creation and life of professional orchestras, the emergence and development of the conductor; the musicians’ job market and professional possibilities
- Audiences and listening: types and profiles of audiences; sociability; listening practice); concert acoustics
- The repertoire: what is performed and who decides it; music programming; repertory canonisation processes; programming trends and reactions towards it
- Live performance: the concert ritual; gesture and communication; the use of the body; other lines of performance studies
- Iconography of concerts in Spain

*Selection process
Proposals must be sent in a .doc o .rtf file, entitled “Surname-congreso concierto” (eg. “García López-congreso concierto”) and addressed to the following email:
congreso.concierto@gmail.com

The file must include the following information:

• title
• author(s)
• academic affiliation
• summary (between 250 and 300 words)
• 5 keywords
• e-mail address

Deadline for proposals: 30th June 2017
Notification of successful submissions: 14th July 2017

*Venue
Biblioteca Histórica de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Calle del Noviciado, 3, 28015 Madrid

*Organizers
Directors: Miguel Ángel Marín and Álvaro Torrente
Academic committee: Màrius Bernadó, Juan José Carreras, José María Domínguez, Judith Ortega
Organization committee: Cristina Aguilar, Ana Lombardía, Josep Martínez
R&D projects based at Universidad de La Rioja and Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales (Universidad Complutense de Madrid):

• Musicología aplicada al concierto clásico en España (siglos XVIII-XXI). Aspectos históricos, productivos, interpretativos e ideológicos (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, HAR2014-53143-P),

• MadMusic. Espacios, géneros y públicos de la música en Madrid, ss. XVll-XX (Comunidad de Madrid, S2015/HUM-3483)

*Contact and info
congreso.concierto@gmail.com
https://www.unirioja.es/mecri
https://iccmu.es