Conference Agenda

Serving as a mentor can be an effective and rewarding strategy to grow as a professional and to foster a personalized praxis. Mentors can share their experience, identify tailored ways to support their colleagues, and recognize new areas for their own development. Understanding the needs of today’s mentees can represent a challenge for new mentors—with the shift of much of our work and interaction to the online space, new professionals entering the field post-pandemic may face unprecedented difficulties in connecting with and learning from colleagues and experts. Furthermore, a high number of pandemic related retirements of experienced colleagues has created an imbalance between those interested in receiving mentorship and those who feel qualified and ready to offer it. This shift in the population of confidently prepared mentors, coupled with the altered expectations of a post-COVID work landscape, demands an evolution of mentoring practices and relationships.

In this poster, the presenters explore challenges and opportunities unique to mid-career mentors as they balance providing support for today’s emerging professional mentees while respecting their own needs and capacity. We present a new mentoring tool designed to help both mentors and mentees to reflect on today’s shifting professional norms and practices and to collaboratively identify personalized solutions. The presenters also highlight the ways in which mentoring dyads can shift to a circular model that balances priorities of well-being and shared learning for both the mentor and the mentee.

In recent years, the “Licinio Refice” Conservatory of Music has seen a remarkable openness and exchange with the many musical realities present throughout the province of Frosinone. Within this context, in 2022 the Conservatory published a monograph (Elena Zomparelli, The Musical Heritage of the Province of Frosinone) which—despite the limitations on field research caused by the pandemic in the previous years—revealed a far richer musical heritage than what had previously been recorded in bibliographic repertoires and both Italian and international databases.

The poster aims to present the results of the 2022 research, enriched by the subsequent identification of additional musical collections that remained virtually unknown until very recently. These findings lay the groundwork for initiatives aimed at preserving and promoting this heritage. Moreover, they provide scholars with valuable resources for documenting and reconstructing a significant, yet still largely unexplored, part of the musical history and culture of the Frosinone area.

This case study examines a primary archival music source preserved in the Lin Erh Archive at the Digital Archive Center for Music, NTNU. The archive is the 1965 computer music concert programme “An Evening with ILLIAC II” at the University of Illinois, given by Erh Lin, a composer from Taiwan. Using this programme as a point of departure, the study returns to the performance setting of an early human–machine ensemble and asks how the computer was conceptualised and presented as one of the “performers” in this experimental event.

The programme is designed not as a conventional list of pieces but as a logic flowchart that presents the concert in terms of an “input–processing–output” structure. It links musical inputs—namely the styles of J. S. Bach, J. Brahms, and Lejaren Hiller (Lin’s teacher)—with the "MUSIC PREPARATION" program and the ILLIAC II computer, leading to an output in which a human string quartet performs with the machine. Humorous decision paths such as “Sleepy? → Human Failure; Execution Terminated” write audience response and human–machine interaction into the design of the event, making performance roles and listening logics visually explicit.

Adopting an archival research approach, the study analyses how ILLIAC II is positioned between “instrument”, “system” and “performer”, how the form of early human–machine ensembles shapes listeners’ understanding, and considers how this programme might be catalogued. As a musical source, it merits further attention, offering valuable clues and room for further reflection and research on the early development of computer music.

Aware of the growing impact of artificial intelligence in academic and research contexts, the Commission of Libraries of Conservatories and Higher Music Education Centres of AEDOM —the Asociación Española de Documentación Musical— has decided to undertake a study to analyse how students in Spain’s higher music education institutions integrate these tools into their learning and everyday academic practice.

Through a structured questionnaire, the study will examine aspects such as the frequency and purpose of generative AI use, levels of trust, ethical concerns, ease of integration into educational practice, and expectations regarding institutional support. Its aim is to explore students’ actual habits, perceptions and concerns, and to establish an empirical foundation for the design of future training initiatives.

This initiative is grounded in the conviction that the libraries of these institutions, due to their dual role as specialised centres and as services supporting higher education, must take on an active role as spaces for technological mediation, critical reflection, and information and digital literacy. Beyond their traditional function of providing access to resources, libraries are envisioned as strategic actors in the development of responsible, ethical and pedagogically grounded digital competences.

Based on the results obtained, the Commission aims to develop guidelines and resources that will enable specialised libraries to effectively support a critical, responsible and creative use of artificial intelligence within the field of higher music education.

As part of the bibliographic database of the Musicology Library of the Institute of Art History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, a thematic subset focusing on concert criticism and related forms of music journalism is gradually being developed. In the past, records of the music criticism activities of prominent Czech musicologists were also incorporated into the database through the conversion of printed bibliographies. These items now form the basis of a systematically constructed thematic area covering concert reviews, critiques, reports, and programs. The poster will present the current state of this sub-database and the possibilities for its further development, particularly in relation to the planned database of Czech concert life in the first half of the 20th century.

The Department of Music of the Austrian National Library (ÖNB) is one of the most important music archives in the world. It is considered to have been founded in 1826. At that time, Moritz von Dietrichstein, as prefect of the Imperial Court Library (today ÖNB), ordered the transfer of material from the Court Music Archive to the Court Library. In the common institution’s narrative, Dietrichstein has the positive image of a preserver of valuable old music manuscripts. His ideological ideas and objectives are hardly considered in previous publications on the Department’s history.

Dietrichstein’s actions must be seen in the context of the efforts of a patriotic and conservative art movement that emerged against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars. Alongside the music loving Dietrichstein, its supporters included the composer and music writer Ignaz von Mosel, who served as a curator of the Court Library from 1829 and played a decisive role in building up its music collection. Both saw a decline in music and considered it a patriotic duty to emulate the great composers of Austrian’s past. They saw their educational mission not only in making old holdings available to scholarship, but also in collecting and hoarding exemplary works for musical practice.

In my paper, I would like to critically examine the selective acquisition policy of Dietrichstein and Mosel, considering views on art and culture, and show to what extent they have shaped the Department of Music as a place of remembrance that continues to forge identity to this day.

After the remarkable opera works that brought him wide fame—someone considered him Puccini’s heir—the Italian composer Riccardo Zandonai (‘Francesca da Rimini’ was his most famous opera) experienced a period of silence before turning, in the 1930s, to film music, following the example of his former teacher Mascagni. Although deeply attached to the theatre and to its audience and committed to balance tradition and modernism, he declared an increasing sense of estrangement from the theatrical world, because he felt that “art was disappearing”. He contributed to the production of six films, either independently or in collaboration with major figures such as R. Rossellini (‘Princess Tarakanova’). He was enthusiastic about the wide circulation that cinema offered his music, free from the demanding logistics of concert tours; he could even join the audience in their applause.

Beyond the human narrative, however, arises a technical issue: how should documents related to works as different as opera and film soundtracks be catalogued? Distinct approaches are required. According to conceptual models, an opera constitutes an autonomous Work, whereas a soundtrack—despite its musical integrity—is created to serve a filmic Work. It may be fragmented, reordered, or mixed in ways that diverge from the composer’s intentions, and numerous Persons are responsible for the film, with the composer being only one of them. Establishing accurate relationships between the music and the Entities involved in a film’s realization is therefore essential.

Without wise cataloguing criteria, a soundtrack risks generating duplications or conflicting entries.

In 2025, a research project was initiated, focusing on Giampaolo Coral (Trieste, 1944-2011), an Italian composer whose primary archives are housed at the Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana in Lugano, Switzerland. The project, conducted within a PNRR-funded Ph.D. program in Musicology at the Free University of Bolzano, supervised by Prof. Paolo Somigli and in collaboration with the Conservatory of Lugano, aims to revise the existing catalogue of Coral’s works and compile a reliable inventory suitable for submission to bibliographic repertoires such as RISM and for updating entries in music dictionaries. Furthermore, the project intends to promote Coral’s legacy through live performances of select compositions, leveraging the Conservatory’s role as a higher music education (HME) institution involving music students in dedicated activities.

A qualitative investigation into the educational experiences of participants, students, and teachers will be conducted, involving semi-structured interviews to capture interpretive strategies and perceptions of Coral’s role within the broader 20th-century art music landscape. The investigation addresses the following questions: what specificities, challenges, and difficulties arise in studying these works? How likely are they to become part of the standard repertoire, and why? Did participants know Coral’s music before this project? How much did the project contribute to their musical knowledge, and why?

The project highlights the distinctive value of preserving this archival collection within a higher education institution and the pivotal role of engaging with teaching and learning practices in promoting it. This contribution provides insight into initial findings and discusses challenges and opportunities connected with this innovative approach.

The lyre is the only stringed instrument whose existence is already witnessed in the Minoan and Mycenaean era, which foreshadows its dominance in classical Greece with only the aulos rivaling it in importance, while the other musical instruments assumed only a marginal importance. The lyre compared to the aulos had primacy. It was the only instrument played by an Olympian god (Apollo) and gained the esteem of the other gods. Given that education in Ancient Greece emphasized music, the lyre becomes the ruler of all instruments and never descends from its pedestal even when it disappears from the limelight and passes into the collective unconscious of the Western world as the symbol of music.

Nikos Xanthoulis is the only person that developed a complete method of the Ancient seven string greek lyre and this method is the most important tool of the education of the music educators that want to use it in their classrooms as an instrument of learning music, active listening, storrytelling, singing, moving and expression of the feelings.

Nikos Xanthoulis composed music for solo lyre, for lyre and voice, for lyre and other instruments, concertos for lyre and orchestra. Other composers like Gary Judd, Lowell Libermann, Fazil Say, Veronique Braccot, Thomas Bramel, Nikos Xarizanos, Dimitris Delfinopoulos composed music for the seven string ancient greek lyre. The repertory is growing fast and it is the first time that needs to catalogued.

On this presentation we are going to present you this catalogue and to play fragments of it on the lyre.

Watermarks have become an integral part of research on medieval manuscripts. The Austrian Academy of Sciences hosts a platform for codices in Austrian collections. As a special feature of this platform manuscripta.at is, that it presents images of watermarks and their metadata for approximately 2,000 paper manuscripts at the moment. These manuscripts naturally also include music manuscripts, too.

For example, Klosterneuburg Abbey, Cod. 69, which is written on paper showing watermarks of the motifs snake and eagle. Modern watermark databases, especially WZMA and WZIS, provide more information on these paper marks, e.g. which other manuscripts or documents were made from the same paper. In this case, for example, a manuscript with sacred songs in Munich State Library or with Magnificat compositions in Graz University Library. Can we find more common ground among these sources? Besides the usual dating and locating by watermarks? Let’s go on a journey through collections of Klosterneuburg, Graz, Munich and other places in search of commonalities between sources based on this paper. And beside learn some about using WZMA - Watermarks of the Middle Ages and WZIS - Watermark Information System.

https://manuscripta.at; https://www.wzma.at; https://www.wasserzeichen-online.de

Lleida has historically lacked suitable venues for the performance of dramatic music. During the second half of the 19th century, the city had only two theatres: the Teatre Principal, active in the winter seasons (1842-1876) and the Teatre dels Camps Elisis, used in the summer seasons (1883-1902), both offering limited and often inadequate conditions for staging opera. Moreover, the local bourgeoisie, largely made up of artisans and merchants, did not embrace opera as a cultural marker in the way the Barcelona bourgeoisie did. Consequently, operatic activity in Lleida was scarce and, in many seasons, entirely absent from public stages.

The recent cataloguing of the musical collection of Lleida Cathedral, however, offers new perspectives on this scenario. Within the legacy of Magí Pontí i Ferrer, chapelmaster and organist, a significant number of operatic scores have been identified. This suggests that operatic repertoire circulated in private settings or in small public venues such as cafés and social clubs. The aim of this study is therefore to determine what operatic works were consumed in these private or semi-public contexts, thereby broadening our understanding of Lleida’s musical life beyond its formal theatres.

By analysing these materials alongside the theatrical programming compiled by Herrera-Llop (1998), it becomes possible to compare the repertoire performed outside institutional venues. This study is part of my ongoing PhD thesis, whose aim is to reveal the relationships between people, spaces and institutions that music built in this growing city located in a crossroads between Catalonia and the rest of Spain.

This paper presents a new study of the collection of 78-rpm records from the 1930s that belonged to the Italian writer Gabriele d’Annunzio and is preserved at the Fondazione "Il Vittoriale degli Italiani" in Gardone Riviera (on the shores of Lake Garda, Italy).

The research focuses on the origins, formation, and early documentation of the collection. Drawing on the preliminary inventory compiled in the 1930s by the librarian Antonio Bruers, the study reconstructs the historical context of the holdings, the criteria that guided their acquisition, and the cultural significance these records held within d’Annunzio’s domestic soundscape.

The paper also presents the cataloguing project aimed at updating and expanding Bruers’ initial documentation and at providing a solid basis for future musicological research on the Poet’s listening practices, aesthetic preferences, and his relationship with the musical culture of his time.

The study discusses how the updated catalogue enables a deeper understanding of repertoire circulation in Italy between the two World Wars and promotes more in-depth scholarly investigations on Gabriele d’Annunzio, offering new critical perspectives on his cultural profile and on his relationship with contemporary musical production. Finally, the project outlines the potential for future valorisation initiatives — including digital access, thematic exhibitions, and interdisciplinary programmes dedicated to sound heritage — demonstrating how enhanced documentation can transform a historically significant yet still little-known collection of 78-rpm records into a resource of broad cultural interest.

Dans l’archivistique contemporaine (M.Schaeverbeke, J.-M.Dureau, O.Krakovitch, M.Hamon), le marketing et la notion de lieu de mémoire convergent autour de l’idée d’une actualisation de l’information, notamment lorsque celle-ci faisait partie du projet initial de l’archive, lié à la préservation d’une identité socioculturelle, ce qui détermine la constitution des collections selon un critère de valeur historique et l’existence d’un lien émotionnel entre le contenu de l’archive et ses conservateurs.

Notre objectif est de spécifier les algorithmes de marketing activés par ces caractéristiques en tant qu’outils de « gestion de la mémoire » (E.I.Murguia), à partir du cas des archives du Conservatoire Rachmaninoff de Paris, conçues dès l’origine par les émigrés comme un moyen de diffusion et de maintien de la tradition musicale russe hors de Russie, et pensées comme des archives historiques destinées à représenter ce patrimoine dans le contexte culturel français (Statuts de La Société musicale russe à l’étranger, 1931, art.II).

+Storytelling (Crafting Narratives, M.Note) : a)monomythe (l’archive-acteur, dont l’histoire traverse le XXᵉ siècle – pertes (Vichy), sauvegardes (A.Kourakine), redécouverte (A.Frilley) ; b)Petal Structure (les photographies, autographes, partitions dédicacées forment la mémoire musicale en pétales) ; c)Framing and Converging Ideas (l’archive-témoignage du destin russo-français du XXᵉ siècle ; faisceau d’idées : dialogue des cultures, vie publique de la diaspora).

+Content Creation : une typologie des produits générateurs de ressources et des stratégies de leur mise en œuvre : a)le contenu éducatif, intégré au processus pédagogique ; b)les événements culturels (concerts, expositions, rencontres) comme des outils de médiation et de valorisation du patrimoine.

This paper considers the status of picture postcards within special collections and in musicological research. With some exceptions, the medium remains overlooked for its ephemerality, despite constituting a ‘communications revolution’ (Gillen 2023) of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. A booming postcard industry mass-produced images of musicians, musical themes, and music-related places, which circulated around the world along with unique messages on the verso. The relationship between recto and verso is particularly difficult to capture as postcards are often treated either simply as items of correspondence or as visual objects of collection or souvenir. This paper begins with brief consideration of insights gleaned from postcards found in musicians’ collections held at the British Library.

I then turn to a corpus of over 700 postcards sent and received by Edward Elgar between 1882 and 1934. Elgar’s lifetime saw the invention, rise in popularity, and ‘golden age’ of the picture postcard, and the composer keenly adopted and interacted with the medium, annotating pictures to mark places he visited and readily deploying the postcard’s classic trope: ‘wish you were here!’. Aided by images and transcriptions made available by Elgar Works, I share some findings of linguistic, social network, and geospatial analyses that speak to the particularities of Elgar’s use of the postcard. Finally, I consider postcards from places that inspired works with ‘distinct “picture-postcard” elements’ (Riley 2007), asking how sometimes complex impressions of travel, place, and feeling split across such postcards’ recto and verso may nuance understandings of Elgar’s music.