The Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini and the Conservatorio ‘G. Verdi’ of Turin are pleased to promote the symposium «Human Body, Musical Performance and its Visual Representation throughout History», to be held in Turin, Conservatorio ‘G. Verdi’, from 19 until 21 March 2026.
The global spread of automatic music reproduction systems and their gradual establishment as the main way of enjoying music have contributed to the slow and inexorable distancing of the listener from the musical performance. The relationship between humans and music has always been characterised by a continuous and fruitful direct relationship of knowledge, frequency, and the synesthetic experience of listening and observation, which has left behind a trail of visual representations of performances and related experiences of live music. Watching an act of musical production, grasping its changing layers of content and meaning, and consequently deciding to capture it in an image, took on a fundamental value throughout history. Such representation is in fact the result of the social acceptability coordinates of the community that generated it, either through adaptation or contrast. Thus, studies about musical iconography that flourished in recent decades highlighted an impressive number of perspectives through which to read images with musical content, including the analysis of the musical performance as portrait, document, symbol and metaphor.
This conference aims to focus on the representation of the musical act as a means of enjoying an action of the human body intended primarily for listening, yet offered to an audience that can only see its visual synthesis. Through various types of artistic expression, from sculpture to photography, painting to video, the conference will consider contributions relating to the image (static or moving) of the performative act of conductors, instrumentalists, singers, etc., not only acted out, but also hinted at, alluded to, or even denied. At the centre of the overall discussion will be reflections on the methodological approaches to the study of images with a performative-musical content, from the traditional to the most experimental ones.
These are the lines of investigation suggested by the scientific committee (non-binding and without chronological limits):
- The sound of the represented musical performance: clues of instrumental technique and performance practice through images
- The context of musical performance in images: space, occasion, audience and social coordinates
- The body (of the conductor, instrumentalist, singer…) captured in the act of musical performance: from ecstasy to deformed body, from metaphysical inspiration to anatomical ‘obscenity’
- Images of music performed in sacred and secular contexts and in hybrid conditions
- Gender issues and represented musical performance
- Musical performance, disability and social acceptability
- Symbols and metaphors of the depicted musical performance
- The relationship between social status, minorities and images with musical performance content
- Colours and abstract shapes as a visual reflection of a musical performance
- Reliability and unreliability of images: realism, idealisation and the questions of method
Programme Committee
- Zdravko Blažeković (Research Center for Music Iconography, CUNY Graduate Center)
- Roberto Illiano (Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini)
- Mara Lacchè (Conservatorio ‘Giuseppe Verdi’ di Torino)
- Fulvia Morabito (Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini)
- Massimiliano Sala (Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini)
- Nicola Usula (Conservatorio ‘Giuseppe Verdi’ di Torino)
Keynote speakers
- Florence Gétreau (Centre national de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris)
- Nicoletta Guidobaldi (Università di Bologna)
- Cristina Santarelli (Istituto per i Beni Musicali in Piemonte)
The official languages of the conference are English, French, and Italian. Papers selected at the conference will be published in a miscellaneous volume.
Papers are limited to twenty minutes in length, allowing time for questions and discussion. Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words and one page of biographical information.
All proposals should be submitted by email no later than Sunday ***14 December 2025*** to <conferences@luigiboccherini.org>. Please include your name, contact details (postal address, e-mail and telephone number) and (if applicable) your affiliation with your proposal.
The committee will make its final decision on the abstracts by January 2026, and contributors will be informed immediately thereafter. Further information about the programme and registration will be announced after that date.
For any additional information, please contact:
Dr. Massimiliano Sala
conferences@luigiboccherini.org
www.luigiboccherini.org