Events
Music and shared imaginaries: nationalisms, communities, and choral singing
International Conference
Music and shared imaginaries: nationalisms, communities, and choral singing
Between October 30th and November 1st, 2014 | Universidade de Aveiro
Hosted and organized by the University of Aveiro and INET-MD (Portugal), and co-organized by the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) , Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini (Italy), and the University of Rioja (Spain)
Philip Bohlman’s writings about music, nationalism and the construction of the “new” Europe proposed a “multitude of angles” that comprehended the plurality of actors and musical practices that weave and fray national identities. In relation to the study of music and nationalisms, this is not merely a question of genres and repertoires, and top-down narratives, but also how musicians negotiate their own nationalities in performance.
Nationalisms coexisted with civil initiatives, which organize communities to regularly play music/sing, institutionalizing a non-professional musical practice, like choral singing, promoting different models of social/individual integration, testing new social orders or utopias. Our interest lies in the ways in which those musical performances and rituals constructed specific ways of being-in-the-world, conveying ways of expressing ideals, transmitting values, ritualizing behaviors, and experiencing social roles (including gender roles).
Cultural policies associated with nationalistic ideologies and regimes conditioned musical creation, musical performance and reception. Interpreting and researching repertoire that bears the mark of nationalism presents a challenge to musicians nowadays, and the understanding of the context and its practices can be the basis for the study of period performance practices, but also for the development of artistic-research projects.
