News
08.06.2026
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]
03.03.2026
Conference in Reykjavík, Iceland, 9–10 October, 2026
The Call for Papers for the conference “Musical Modernism in a Global Perspective” is now open. The conference will take place in Reykjavík, Iceland on 9 and 10 October 2026, at the Reykjavík Academy (Hafnarstræti 5, Reykjavík).
The conference aims to explore the notion of musical modernism through a wide lens, including geography, musical style, aesthetics, reception, politics, transmission, and institutionalization. Studies of modernist traditions in countries or cultures that might be regarded as “peripheral” are particularly welcomed, as are studies that offer new perspectives on modernism in areas already well represented in musicological scholarship. Particular attention will be placed on the period ca. 1945–1980, although contributions outside of this time frame are also welcome.
The conference is organized by the Reykjavík Academy, with funding from the Icelandic Research Fund, and is open to ALL scholars, students, and individuals interested in the topic. In conjunction with the conference, the music festival ErkiTíð will take place, devoted to music by some of Iceland’s leading modernist composers.
We invite interested participants to submit a paper proposal (max. 300 words), accompanied by a short biographical note (max. 100 words) by 25 May to: [email protected]. Each lecture will be 20 minutes + 10 minutes of discussion. Applicants will be notified by 15 June.
Organizing committee:
Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, Helgi Rafn Ingvarsson, Tui Hirv, Tinna Þorsteinsdóttir.
This conference is part of the research project “Modernism in Icelandic Music,” see: https://akademia.is/mim/
05.03.2025
In April 2025, Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, the project’s Principal Investigator, will give a series of lectures in Tokyo, Japan, including a lecture at Waseda University on the influence on Japanese music on Icelandic modernist scores in the 1970s. These include Atli Heimir Sveinsson’s Flute Concerto, Xanties for flute and piano, and Japanese Poems for mixed choir and guitar, as well as Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson’s Kalais for solo flute. The lecture is sponsored by the Japanese Society for Musicology. Ingólfsson’s stay in Japan will also include meetings with local musicians and musicologists, in an attempt to examine more closely the influence of Japanese music and “orientalism” in general in Icelandic modernist music, particularly during the 1970s.
05.03.2025
Árni Heimir Ingólfsson presented a lecture titled “Creating Musical Modernism in Mid-Twentieth Century Iceland” at the annual meeting of the Royal Musical Association (London, September 2024), and the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society (Chicago, November 2024).
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