Iberian musical crossroads through the ages: Images of music-making in their transcultural exchange
Societat Catalana de Musicologia & Institut d’Estudis Catalans
Barcelona, 17–19 October 2018
Iberian peninsula—the home of Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Basque, and Galician peoples—has been a significant economic and political region through the history, which had been both conquered by the powers coming from elsewhere and generating its own forces exploring and conquering other regions and cultures in the world. From the Bronze Age onwards, explorers and traders used the peninsula as the crossroad between the Mediterranean and much of the rest of the world. The Phoenicians came to Iberia in the ninth century BC, and the Greeks followed two centuries later. The Romans conquest of Hispania started during the second Punic War in 206 BC and by the time of Augustus near the entire peninsula was under the control of Rome. During the Middle Ages, Al-Andalus with its Islamic administration was open to an import of Arab knowledge, philosophy, culture, arts and music. Later on, Spain and Portugal were the strongest naval powers in the world and their overseas explorations have radically altered both the old and new worlds: Spain influenced South American and Caribbean cultures, and even the Philippines; the Portuguese travellers, traders and conquerors reached Brazil, sailed along the African coast, and arrived all the way to India, Malacca, and Macao. Through the crown of Aragon, Catalonia experienced cultural exchanges within the western Mediterranean Sea and southern Italy. In addition to the overseas networks, cultural and artistic exchanges were also occurring in Europe through commercial and political ties, and also through marriages between the royal houses. Throughout the history pilgrims walking the Camino de Santiago, or visiting the shrines of Montserrat or Fatima were bringing with them songs, dances and instruments from all over Europe.
All these and many other explorations and migrations created a fertile framework for a rich exchange of musical ideas, sounds, forms, rhythms, dances, and instruments. The Barcelona conference of the ICTM Study Group on the Iconography of Performing Arts will examine visual sources documenting transborder and transcultural transmission of musical ideas between the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of the world. Papers are invited concerning the following topics:
Sounds of the ancient world: The Iberian cultures in an exchange with other Mediterranean traditions
Islamic sounds in Al-Andalus
Music and dances of Spanish Sephardim
Music along the road: Travelers and pilgrimages in Spain and Portugal
The Borgia family as a mediator of musical life between Iberia, Rome and the Vatican
Music and explorers (Columbus, Vasco da Gama, trade routes to Latin America, Asia, Africa)
Portuguese ethnohistoric accounts about music of Brazil, Macao, and Estado da Índia
Spanish encounters with music cultures of pre-Colombian America
Music in Catholic missions of New Spain and in the Christianization of Goa
Exchanges between Catalonia and kingdoms of Naples and Sicily
Reception of the Italian opera in Spain and Portugal
Zarzuela and other music theater in Latin America
Spain as a topos in music exoticism (opera, operetta, ballet, dance); Orientalism in Spanish art
Exchanges of musical instruments between Iberian Peninsula and the rest of the world
Internal musical exchanges between the peoples of the Iberian peninsula
Spanish/Portuguese iconographic models used in Latin American decorative programs
Transcultural musical topics in the 20th- and 21st-century art
Proposals related to other transcultural music exchanges in the world may be also considered
English is preferred language for the conference presentations.
Abstracts of 250–300 words may be submitted before 2 April 2018 to:
Zdravko Blazekovic
Research Center for Music Iconography
CUNY The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10016-4309
&
Jordi Ballester
Societat Catalana de Musicologia
Institut d’Estudis Catalans
Carrer del Carme 47
08001 Barcelona