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]