Events

The conference will take place in the lecture hall of the Reykjavík Academy, Hafnarstræti 5 (third floor) on 9 and 10 October 2026. There is no conference registration fee. Coffee and snacks will be provided during afternoon breaks.

Friday 9 October:

11-12:30: Welcome; Musical Modernism in Iceland

Árni Heimir Ingólfsson (Reykjavík Academy): Modernism in Icelandic Music: Composers, Reception, Influence

Helgi Rafn Ingvarsson (Reykjavík Academy): Aleatory Techniques in Icelandic Modernist Works

12:30-14:00: Lunch break

14-15:30: Modernisms Around the Globe

Björn Heile (University of Glasgow): Think Globally, Musick Locally: Global and Local (Sub-) networks of Serial Composition since WWII

Andrew Shenton (Boston University): Sacred Modernism at the Periphery: Liturgical Experiment and Musical Modernity after 1945

Emily Abrams Ansari (Western University, Canada): Modernist Techniques and 1970s Feminism in Canada: The Music of Ann Southam

15:30-15:45: Coffee break

15:45-17:50: Analytical Approaches

Nick Poelwijk (New York University): Donald Keats and American Modernism: The Piano Sonata (1971) as a Case Study in Neoclassical Peripherality

Carl Tertio Druml (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna): Fortspinnung, Gestural Time and a Descent into Madness: Salvatore Sciarrino’s Manipulation of Time in his Quaderno di Strada (2003) and his Opera MacBeth (2002)

Helga Karen (Sibelius Academy): Music Analysis in Action: The Practical Application of Modernism Music Analysis in Performance-Based Research. A Case Study of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke

Federico Favali (Independent composer/scholar): Fragment and Crystallization: Poetics of Frost in Inverno in-ver by Castiglioni

Saturday 10 October:

10:00-12:00: Cultural Transfer and Reception

Marilyn Nonken (New York University): Cage, Messiaen & the Origins of Spectral Music

Dörte Schmidt (Universität der Künste, Berlin): How Fluxus Came to East Asia. Exile and the Global Transfer of Experimental Avant-Garde after WWII

Floris Meens (Radboud University): No Place for Neutrality. Dutch Musical Infrastructures, (Inter)national Modernism, and the Consequences of War, 1888–1960.

Magdalena Marija Meašić (University of Rijeka): From a Soviet Perspective: Insights into the Music Biennale Zagreb and New Music in the Journal Sovetskaya muzïka

12:00-13:15: Lunch break

13:15-14:45: Polish Modernism and the International Scene

Iwona Lindstedt (University of Warsaw): Józef Koffler and the ISCM: Music, Networks, and the Circulation of Modernism in Interwar Europe

Beata Bolesławska (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw): Between an International Scene of Modern Music and the Homeland: the Polish Section of the ISCM in the Face of Cold War

Kinga Kiwała (Penderecki Academy of Music, Krakow): The Quality of Sound in Polish Music after 1960: Paradigms, Attitudes, Transformations

14:45-15:00: Coffee break

15:00-16:30: Modernism in the Baltic States

Jānis Kudiņš (Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music): Moderated Modernism and Missing Avant-Garde: The Distinctive Specificity of Latvian Art Music’s Historical Experience between 1945 and 1980

Rima Povilionienė (Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre): Lithuanian Electronic Music Experiments in the 1960s-70s in-between the Underground and Art-Music Positioning

Brigitta Davidjants (Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre): Negotiating Modernity through Popular Music in Soviet Estonia

17:00: concert at ErkiTíð festival, Reykjavík Art Museum/Hafnarhús (optional)

For more information, please contact [email protected]