Salón de Actos de la Facultad de Geografía e Historia

Universidad Complutense de Madrid   

In recent years, musicological research in Spanish has shown a growing interest in methodological approaches that focus on the analysis of music. The creation of the Working Commission on Music Analysis within the Spanish Society of Musicology, together with the founding of the Society of Analysis and Music Theory (Sociedad de Análisis y Teoría Musical, SATMUS), and the holding of the first congresses promoted by both (Oviedo 2022 and Valladolid 2024; and Madrid 2023, respectively), have demonstrated the importance and validity of trends that have as one of their main objectives the study of the processes of meaning in music.

One of the most attractive analytical methodologies for the study of musical signification processes in musical repertoires since the 18th century is Topic Theory. After its distant birth (Ratner 1980), this theory has evolved (Allanbrook 1983, 2014; Agawu 1991, 2009; Hatten 1994, 2004, 2018; Monelle 2000, 2006) until it categorises a universe of topoi in which the historical past, ethnicity or identity and the stylistic diversity of each period, together with notions such as markedness, trope or gesture, form the referents for new analytical tools. Moreover, the recent bibliography (Sheinberg 2012; Panos et al. 2013; Mirka 2014; Plesch, 2017; Grimalt 2020) has shown its adaptability beyond the European classical-romantic canon that gave birth to it: chronologically, it extends both to the Baroque and to the present; culturally, it transcends the Austro-German, Italian and French traditions and extrapolates to other European and American settings.

The validity of Topic Theory as an analytical approach to the study of Hispanic repertoires was demonstrated at the 1st International Conference 'Topics in Hispanic Music: 18th-21st Centuries', held in Valladolid in 2002. The success of this conference, which resulted in the forthcoming volume Tópicos y significados en la música hispana (siglos XVIII-XXI): propuestas analíticas, and which preceded the R&D project Tópicos, diálogos e identidades en la música española: siglos XVIII-XXI (PID2023-141230NB-I00), showed that it was appropriate to convene a second edition.

The II International Conference Topics and Hispanic Music (18th-21st centuries): topoi, rhetoric and narrativity has two objectives:

1. To continue to apply the concepts and procedures derived from Topic Theory to the analysis of Hispanic music from the 18th century to the present.
2. To open the focus to other complementary approaches to topoi in the study of musical meaning: rhetoric and narratology.

Rhetoric has inspired musical meaning ever since the metaphor of 'music as discourse' was established in the 18th century, articulated in dialogue with figure theory and later with topoi. Today, however, its relevance can also be traced in more recent music and its impact on performative practice can be explored (Hellaby 2022). For its part, narratology, also updated alongside topoi (Grabócz 2021), underlines the cognitive nature of its basic concept: the plot. Questions about the dramatic model, archetypes, musical temporality, the narrative voice, and even the roles of listeners and performers enrich the debates that, from a narratological point of view, contribute to the clarification of meaning in music. Ultimately, all these analytical tools make it possible to develop musical hermeneutics, the study of the processes that generate meaning in music through signs (be they topics, rhetorical figures or narrative patterns).

The organisers of the II International Conference Topics and Hispanic Music (18th-21st centuries): topoi, rhetoric and narrativity invite the musicological community to submit analytical research proposals along these two lines, giving priority to those that focus on musical repertoires from Spain and Latin America, or to theoretical and methodological approaches that are unexplored or under discussion, even if they are not specifically focused on Hispanic repertoires.

Conference Scientific Committee:

Oana Andreica (Academia Națională de Muzică "Gheorghe Dima", Cluj-Napoca)

Paulo Ferreira de Castro (Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

Márta Grabócz (Université de Strasbourg)

Joan Grimalt (ESMUC)

Luis López Ruiz (UCM)

Clive McClelland (University of Leeds)

María Nagore-Ferrer (UCM)

Águeda Pedrero Encabo (UVa)

Carlos Villar-Taboada (Uva)

 

SUBMISSION DETAILS / CALL FOR PAPERS

The deadline for abstracts is Friday 28 February 2025. Abstracts should be sent to the following address:

topicosmusicahispana@gmail.com

The abstracts, in Spanish or English, should be a maximum of 300 words and should include the following information

• Title
• Author(s)
• Institutional affiliation
• E-mail address
• Contact phone number
• Short CV (maximum 10 lines)

The Organising Committee will communicate the acceptance of the proposal before 4 April 2025. After the Congress, a selection of the papers presented will be published in a monographic volume.

 

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