Borderlands: Classical Music and Society

Call for Projects, Workshops and Papers ‘Borderlands: Classical Music and Society’ Maastricht Centre for the Innovation of Classical Music Dates: 20 to 23 April 2022 Online Symposium

In an effort to make classical music relevant to a wider portion of society, institutions and musicians are increasingly seeking new ways of engaging with partners, social themes and other types of music. Topics such as climate change, diversity and education are seeing an explosion of energy and attention, and organizations are seeking ways to bring these to the forefront in artistic as well as practical ways.

Such attempts are often explicitly placed as opening up classical music to new themes, locations and people. They are attempts to expand the borders of the discipline. The 2022 MCICM symposium will critically examine this area of interaction between classical music and society, exploring initiatives that seek to blur the traditional borders of classical music practice, while also discussing how such borders are still rigorously policed in certain circumstances.

While a 'border' has been described between classical music and society, this symposium also seeks to question whether such inside/outside divisions are accurate or helpful when considering the practice. The orchestra, for example, is a social entity with social dynamics at play both within and outwith the organisation. There is no binary between music and society but a complex web of interactions and networks.

An indicative list of themes includes:

- Breaking down borders: Increasing access to classical music (and critiques of such attempts)

- Diversity and representation

- Music in educational, healthcare or other non-traditional social settings

- Cross-arts and cross-genre collaboration

- Measuring the social ‘impact’ of classical music practice

- Ways of valuing classical music beyond its aesthetic qualities

- Critical reflections on best practice and/or leaders in the field

- Instrumentalisation of music as an art form and musical autonomy

- Classical Music as a genre/as part of a genre hierarchy

We would again like to invite music practitioners; music educators and students; orchestral musicians, directors and administrators; as well as academic and artistic researchers to present their thoughts and work on borderlands in classical music.

We would like to invite proposals for single presentations, panels, roundtables and online workshops. The symposium will be held online, but if the corona-situation allows, we will add some live events in Maastricht.

Abstracts (max. 250 words) should be submitted to mcicm-fasos@maastrichtuniversity.nl by 1 February 2022 5pm CET. Please include the name of presenter(s)/author(s), a short biography and organizational or institutional affiliation. Please include what kind of online presentation you envisage for your contribution. The committee will review and select projects based on their relevance to the symposium theme, clarity of the project’s main learning opportunity, and originality. Moreover, the committee seeks to construct a program bringing together perspectives from all levels of experience and expertise. Experts in other fields who connect their research to classical music are welcome. For queries, please contact mcicm-fasos@maastrichtuniversity.nl

Programme Committee: Prof Peter Peters, Director Maastricht Centre for the Innovation of Classical Music, Maastricht University. Dr Stefan Rosu, Intendant philharmonie zuidnederland. Dr Ruth Benschop, Professor at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, Research Centre Autonomy of the Arts and the Public Sphere. Mette Laugs, Head of Programme Classical 1, Conservatorium Maastricht Dr Neil T. Smith, Postdoctoral researcher, Maastricht University. Karoly Molina, MA, Research assistant, Maastricht University. The Maastricht Centre for the Innovation of Classical Music (MCICM) aims to study the dynamics of changing classical music practices and their societal contexts, and to actively shape classical music futures. The centre is a collaboration between philharmonie zuidnederland, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, and Maastricht University. We combine academic research on innovation of performance practices with artistic research to renew classical music practices and music education in artistically relevant ways.