Call for Papers: European Concert Life in the Interwar Period

CALL FOR PAPERS

Srdečně zveme k účasti na konferenci European Concert Life in the Interwar Period: Musical Agents and Discourses in Changing Metropolises, která se uskuteční 15.–17. 6. 2027 v Muzikologické knihovně (Puškinovo náměstí 447/9, Praha 6). Své abstrakty posílejte V. Kapsovi (kapsa@udu.cas.cz) a B. Lockemu (B-Locke@wiu.edu).

Uzávěrka přihlášek je 15. ledna 2027.

https://www.udu.cas.cz/cz/akce/european-concert-life-in-the-interwar-period-musical-agents-and-discourses-in-changing-metropolises

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We cordially invite submissions for the conference European Concert Life in the Interwar Period: Musical Agents and Discourses in Changing Metropolises. The event will be held on June 15–17, 2027, at the Musicology Library (Puškinovo náměstí 447/9, Prague 6). Please submit your abstracts to Václav Kapsa (kapsa@udu.cas.cz) and Brian Locke (B-Locke@wiu.edu).

The application deadline is 15 January 2027.

https://www.udu.cas.cz/en/akce/european-concert-life-in-the-interwar-period-musical-agents-and-discourses-in-changing-metropolises
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The decades between the First and Second World Wars witnessed profound political, social, and cultural transformations throughout Europe. The collapse of empires, the emergence of new nation-
states, economic crises, and the rise of competing political ideologies reshaped urban life across the region. At the same time, concert culture flourished. In such cities as Prague, Lviv, Paris, Barcelona, and Zagreb, concert spaces became important for articulating and contesting questions of identity, modernity, cultural prestige, historical memory, and international exchange. Concerts brought together performers, organisers, critics, audiences, and cultural leaders, generating a rich discourse across newspapers, journals, and promotional media. Although scholarly interest in concert history has grown considerably, research remains heavily focused on individual institutions and repertoires; as a complex social and communicative phenomenon, concert life remains less extensively explored than opera and musical theatre.

This conference seeks to explore concert life in European urban centres between 1918 and 1939 from a transnational, comparative, and interdisciplinary perspective. Building on recent developments in performance history, urban musicology, digital humanities, and cultural history, we aim to investigate how musical agents and institutions shaped the concert landscape of interwar Europe, and how concert culture responded to broader socio-political shifts.

We encourage contributions that examine the role of cities as dynamic spaces of musical production and exchange. We seek papers that situate concert culture within broader processes of transformation, continuity, and reconfiguration. Furthermore, we invite studies that move beyond national narratives to explore connections and collaborations across linguistic, ethnic, and political boundaries.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Concert institutions, venues, organisers, agencies, and cultural entrepreneurs;
• Musicians, conductors, critics, and other agents of concert life;
• Concert audiences, listening practices, and the formation of musical publics;
• Music criticism, advertising, and media discourses surrounding concerts;
• National, cosmopolitan, regional, and transnational dimensions of concert programming;
• Interactions among linguistic, ethnic, religious, and social communities within
concert culture;
• Constructions of gender within interwar concert life;
• The politics of repertoire, canon formation, historical consciousness, and ceremonial events;
• Methodological and theoretical approaches to the study of concert life, including comparative and interdisciplinary conceptual frameworks, innovative archival and practice-based methods, and digital and computational approaches to research, visualization, and
presentation (e.g., mapping networks, repertoire databases, and statistical analyses).

We invite abstracts for individual 20-minute papers. The official conference language will be English.

Abstracts of approximately 300 words, accompanied by a short biographical note and the author’s contact details, should be submitted by 15 January 2027 to Václav Kapsa (kapsa@udu.cas.cz) and Brian Locke (B-Locke@wiu.edu). Applicants will be notified of the outcome in February 2027.

The conference is organised by the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences within the research project “Concert Life in Prague 1918–1938: Musical Agents and Discourses in a Changing Metropolis,” funded by the Czech Science Foundation (project no. 26-23752S).