Mapping Musical Life (MML). Music and Urban Culture from Early Modernity to the Present

Florence, 05-07.06.2024

Deadline: 31.01.2024

Department of History, Archeology, Geography, Art and Performance (SAGAS)

In musicology, the effects of the so-called “spatial turn” that has swept the social sciences and the humanities over the past several decades include a series of innovative developments such as urban musicology and sound studies. As well as reconfiguring the role of spatiality within historical processes in general, by emphasizing a tripartite dialectic between temporal, spatial and social dimensions, this “turn” has also prompted a dramatic emergence of new currents of research about the relationship between music and the city (these include R. Strohm, Music in Late Medieval Bruges, 1990; H. Johnson, Listening in Paris. A Cultural History, 1996; D. B. Scott, Sounds of the Metropolis. The 19th-Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris, and Vienna; E. Sala, The Sounds of Paris in Verdi’s ‘La traviata’, 2013; Hearing the City in Early Modern Europe, ed. by T. Knighton, A. Mazuela-Anguita, 2018; Music, Place, and Identity in Italian Urban Soundscapes circa 1550-1860, ed. by S. Caputo, F. Piperno, E. Senici, 2023). In these studies, the urban context, its musical life and its soundscape constitute not only the backdrop against which composers and their works stand out, but they also become protagonists in the spatialization of history and the historicization of urban spaces. A key contribution to the development of this approach has come from the digital tools developed in the field of geography, such as GIS (Geographic Information Systems), which enable the presentation and examination of data at multiple levels.

Starting from an appraisal of the results achieved by the project Mapping Music Life: Urban Culture and the Local Press in Post-Unification Italy (PRIN 2017, http://www.mml-project.it), this conference intends to broaden the project’s scope through a discussion encompassing both aspects of methodology and case studies concerning the relationship between music and urban space.

We welcome proposals on the following topics (non-exhaustive list):

  • Music and urban spaces
  • Music and architectural spaces
  • Mapping and new perspectives on musical historiography
  • Mapping and Public History of Music
  • Recounting music through space

Proposals should be sent to mml-conference@sagas.unifi.it by 31 January 2024. The file (in pdf format) should contain a title and abstract for the paper, in Italian or English (we invite you to not exceed 3000 characters, or 400 words, excluding a possible bibliography for reference), and a brief biographic note on the author.

The scientific committee will evaluate the proposals and notify you of the selection by 15 March 2023. The presentations (in Italian or English) will be delivered in person and must not exceed 20 minutes. We plan to publish a selection of papers in a peer-reviewed volume.

Scientific committee: Andrea Chegai, Mila De Santis, Emilio Sala, Anna Tedesco

Further information: