Televising Art Music: Space, Performance and Audiences

Editors: Sara Beimdieke (Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf), Jelena Novak (CESEM, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa), Emiliano Rossi (Università di Padova)

Over the past decades, sound studies and musicology have developed a substantial body of scholarship on the relationship between Western art music and audiovisual media. This research has highlighted the role of sonic and musical textures as narrative devices that shape processes of diegesis, mediation, and semiotic (re)articulation. However, a television-specific perspective remains comparatively fragmented. This becomes particularly evident when set against the extensive attention devoted to popular music cultures and their entanglements with broadcasting industries, performance cultures, and celebrity economies.

It is from this void that the present issue of View Journal takes its point of departure. The discussion is oriented towards reconsidering the relationship between the medium and art music by moving beyond an understanding of music as merely ancillary to the televisual image. The intention is rather to examine art music as a crucial structuring element within a wide range of television texts that have contributed to shaping collective imaginaries. These include the on-screen transmission of well-codified genres such as opera, as well as the televisual staging of symphonic concerts and orchestral performances.

This volume aims to frame art music on television as a post-1945 phenomenon which encompasses multiple dimensions: it is simultaneously national and transnational, as well as rooted in the traditions of the classical canon while fostering progressive experiments in music theatre for the screen. At the same time, television made extensive use of art music in more functional ways (i.e. employing excerpts as background motifs), shaping atmospheres and reinforcing the medium’s audiovisual language. It also opened up new spaces, reaching wider audiences by bringing music directly into the living room, while also providing television with fresh content and offering composers new creative and professional opportunities.

The issue is structured around three main axes of investigation. First, it encourages contributions rooted in a comparative, European perspective in order to examine how Western art music has been positioned, programmed and represented within television schedules across diverse broadcasting frameworks, with particular attention to the political implications of such circulations. This entails exploring the often less visible deployment of art music as an interstice or backdrop to diverse formats of television content, beyond broadcasts explicitly devoted to music.

Second, it seeks to explore how classical music displayed on television functions as a signifier within broader processes of history-, identity-, memory- and community-making, notably through its contribution to shaping forms of nationalist aspirations and collective belonging. Special attention will be devoted to the role of public service broadcasters and their intra-continental alliances in the post-war period. These institutions were pivotal in promoting an educational and civic mission that positioned classical music as a key component of broadcasting cultures and audience formation.

Third, the volume foregrounds the dynamics of eventisation that have characterised television since the early decades of public service broadcasting, whereby musical programmes have frequently taken the form of media spectacles, temporarily suspending the ordinary flow of scheduling and often recurring in connection with moments of festivity, commemoration, or solemnity. Focus is on the processes of televisualisation of music, through which musical performance is adapted and made compatible with the technical, aesthetic and industrial logics of television production.

Across these three thematic strands, the issue turns towards contemporary transformations in creative industries, where processes of platformisation and multi-distribution have repositioned classical music within an increasingly expanded media ecology. The genre re-emerges across pay and non-linear services, often reaching wider audiences while simultaneously renegotiating its cultural positioning within today’s screen-based environments.

Fostering a critical-interpretative approach by bringing together academic researchers, professionals, and experts, Issue 32 of View Journal welcomes contributions which engage with the following thematic prompts (please note that the list is not exhaustive):

• the logics, politics and strategies of televising music, including its adaptation, aestheticisation and staging for the screen;
• art music programmes in European television history and the development of specialised thematic channels;
• genres and forms of art music and their logics of circulation on television;
• the artistic and socio-cultural impact of music programming on television, also with respect to the pedagogical mission of public service broadcasters and EBU initiatives;
• composing for the small screen and the technical, production and labour practices involved in televising music;
• the process of popularisation of art music and mediation of other music traditions (i.e. folk, jazz, blues);
• the performance activities of PSBs-owned symphonic orchestras and ensembles around Europe;
• musical heritage and media archaeologies, with particular attention to television;
• the uses of art music within TV paratexts (i.e. opening/intro themes) and as an extra-diegetic components (i.e. underscore, jingles);
• the interplay between screen media, theatre performance and musical traditions.

Submission requirements

We invite submissions from television scholars, media historians, musicologists, sound studies experts, researchers interested in the connections between music, film, television and digital screen media, audiovisual practitioners, and archivists.

Contributions to this issue may take the form of full academic research articles (5-6.000 words) or shorter creative papers (“Enthusiasms”, around 3.000 words) as well as audiovisual essays. More details on submission formats can be found here. All articles will be peer-reviewed. View Journal is a diamond open-access publication.

Paper proposals (max. 500 words, plus a biographical note of max. 100 words) are due by October 7, 2026. Submissions should be sent to journal@euscreen.eu as a single PDF file containing both the proposal and the biographical note; please copy emiliano.rossi.1@unipd.it to your email. Authors can specify in their proposal the format of their contribution. A notice of acceptance will be sent to authors by the beginning of November.

Full contributions will be due by April 15, 2027. As outlined in the guidelines, please note that the inclusion of audiovisual extracts is strongly recommended; audio-only embedded extracts are also welcome. The issue is scheduled for publication in December 2027.

Questions about the issue can be directed to the co-editors of the issue: Sara Beimdieke sara.beimdieke@rsh-duesseldorf.de, Jelena Novak jnovak@fcsh.unl.pt, Emiliano Rossi emiliano.rossi.1@unipd.it.