“Film Music Between the Movies and the Concert Hall”

International Conference

Graz (Austria), 23.-24.11.2023

Deadline: 30.06.2023

Miklós Rózsa’s autobiography Double Life from 1982 creates a persistent narrative of the composers’ professional life, which selectively separated his artistic identities as a film composer from that as a concert composer. Nevertheless, the professional realities of many composers and musicians working for the Hollywood movie studios did not match the aesthetic dichotomy encompassed in the term “double life”. In fact, there were numerous interconnections between Hollywood’s movie industry and the classical music business in the United States that have not yet been exhaustively researched.

The international conference “Film Music Between the Movies and the Concert Hall” aims to critically investigate the medial space situated in between the movies and the concert hall that was shaped by various agents working in both branches – not least by the adaptation of film music for the concert hall and vice versa. The explicit focus on the dynamic space lying in between aesthetic poles is suitable to bring aesthetic and ideological factors to light that illuminate our knowledge about music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

We invite proposals for papers (max. 20 mins.) on the topic “Film Music Between the Movies and the Concert Hall”, not limited to any specific cultural context or time period. The conference is intended to promote critical scholarly exchange from a variety of disciplines (such as musicology, sociology, literary studies, media studies, cultural studies, etc.) on the manifold intersections between film music and the concert hall as cultural and aesthetic symbol.

Possible topics might include but are not limited to:

• historiographical, (inter-)medial, cultural and aesthetic aspects concerning the movies and the concert hall
• the role of film producers, and film studios in connecting the movies and the concert hall
• aesthetic discourses that deal with film music in relation to the concert hall
• depictions of concert music in films
• adaptations of film music for the concert hall in the past and present
• relation between the film industry and concert promoters
• case studies on musicians, and composers and their works situated between film music and the concert hall

Proposals should be submitted by June 30, 2023 via email to filmmusic(at)uni-graz.at. Acceptance notices will be sent out at latest by the beginning of September 2023.

Proposals should include an abstract of the proposed paper (max. 300 words), contact details (including name, email-address, and affiliation) and a short bio (max. 150 words).

The conference language will be English. Participation in the conference is free of charge.

Program committee:
Nassim Balestrini (Department of American Studies, University of Graz)
Saskia Jaszoltowski (Institute of Musicology, University of Graz)
Ingeborg Zechner (Institute of Musicology, University of Graz)

For further information please contact
Ingeborg Zechner (ingeborg.zechner(at)uni-graz.at).

The conference is organized as a part of the Austrian Science Fund project “Franz Waxman – Between Film Music and the Concert Hall” (P 33029) based at the Institute of Musicology at the University of Graz.