mcc

							Gustav Mahler Centenary Conference

‘Mahler: Contemporary of the Past?’

Call for Proposals

The Department of Music and Sound Recording at the University of Surrey will be
hosting a three-day centenary conference entitled ‘Mahler: Contemporary of the
Past?’ on July 7-9, 2011.

This conference offers an opportunity in Mahler’s anniversary year to re-evaluate the
composer’s position within the musical and cultural landscapes of the 21st century,
and to reassess his relationship with the historical traditions of his own time.

Over thirty years ago Pierre Boulez suggested that:

‘There is too much nostalgia, too much attachment to the past in Mahler’s music for
him to be declared, without any qualifications, the revolutionary who initiated an
irreversible process of radical renewal in music’.

But at the same time he also stated:

‘There is no sense in looking for the clear markers we find in classical music … There
is [in Mahler] … a determination to disregard the categories of the past’.

And, rhetorically on the late nineteenth century:

‘We are approaching the end of an era surfeited with richness, asphyxiated by
plethora: it can end at worst – and at best – only in infatuation, sentimental apoplexy.
Goodbye, romanticism with your fatty degeneration of the heart!’

The conference theme’s play on the title of Kurt Blaukopf’s 1969 study of the
composer (Gustav Mahler oder der Zeitgenosse der Zukunft) is designed to encourage
scholarly re-investigation, three decades on, of these contrasting critical and historical
perspectives, and to invite contributions in the following principal areas:

      Mahler and historicism, archaicism, classicism, early romanticism or ‘anti-
       modernism’

      The conditions of Mahler’s contemporary, 21st-century exposure and
       reception (in scholarship, popular culture or performance)

      Nostalgia, both as cultural trope of homesickness or yearning for the
       past and as latter-day commercial industry

Although these are intended to be the focal points of the conference, the convenors
warmly welcome proposals relating to other aspects of Mahler scholarship.

Keynote speaker: Professor Julian Johnson (Royal Holloway, London)
The conference will include a rare UK concert given by world-renowned re-
interpreter of Mahler, Uri Caine, other musical performances, an art exhibition, and a
sound installation created by Matthew Sansom.

Proposals for papers (20 mins, plus 10 mins discussion), lecture-demonstrations (40
mins), or themed panel discussions (60-90 mins) are invited as follows:

      For individual papers and lecture-demonstrations, please submit an abstract of
       no more than 250 words
      For themed panel discussions, please submit an abstract of no more than 500
       words, and a list of participants

Proposals should be submitted by e-mail to Jeremy Barham (j.barham@surrey.ac.uk)
no later than Friday 31 December, 2010. Please use the same address for informal
enquiries. Details of the conference webpage will be announced shortly.

The language of the conference will be English.

The convenors are currently in discussions with a leading academic publisher to
produce a volume of selected papers from the conference.

Notification of accepted proposals will be given during January 2011, and details of
the conference programme and the registration process will be announced shortly
thereafter.

Conference committee:
Prof. Peter Franklin (University of Oxford)
Prof. James Buhler (University of Texas, Austin)
Prof. Dr. Peter Revers (Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst, Graz)
Dr Stephen Downes (University of Surrey)
Dr Jeremy Barham (University of Surrey)