Conference Agenda

A recent enquiry about a puzzling retroconversion catalogue record has led to the suprising and intriguing re-discovery of a full-size paper replica piano keyboard made for Archduchess Sophie of Austria by woman composer, Teodozja Papara (1797-1873) and formerly held in the personal imperial library of Austrian Empress Elisabeth (1837–1898), known as ‘Sisi’. ​ The keyboard is beautifully presented, made of paper pasted onto card board with inside folds covered in silk brocade fabric and outside red velvet with gold tooling. The full size keyboard includes notes on notation and theory in German and Polish with some Italian. There are manuscript annotations with some hand-colouring. This item is interesting in many aspects: it was created by woman composer in Lemberg (Lwòw, Lviv) which at varying times was part of Austria-Hungary, Poland and Ukraine. Papara composed mainly piano works including tutors. The replica paper piano keyboard was part of a piano school she wrote and a more complete copy is held in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna. The composer registered several patents relating to the paper piano keyboard. Research into this fascinating keyboard includes the provenance history and the use of such paper keyboard. While the keyboard was created for Archduchess Sophie who was in her early 50s at the time and less likely to have used this herself for study, it could very well have been a presentation copy which was then taken into the imperial personal library of Sisi and may have been used by her daughters.

This paper examines the role of phrase rhythm in Brahms’s late piano pieces (Opp. 116–119) and investigates how Brahms uses phrase rhythmic design to shape temporal continuity and formal direction. Recent contributions in Brahms and the Shaping of Time (2021) have drawn attention to the composer’s sensitivity to metric and temporal nuance. The present study focuses on the phrase rhythmic techniques through which this nuance takes effect.

Instead of relying only on regular spans of four and eight measures, Brahms often adjusts or reorganizes these spans through expansions, truncations, delayed completions, or by setting different patterns of phrase rhythm in contrast with one another within the same piece. These techniques shape sectional boundaries, influence the sense of momentum, and guide the unfolding of form functional relationships across the piece. Such interactions show how phrase rhythm contributes not only to local shaping but also to the long range pacing and structural coherence characteristic of Brahms’s late style.

By highlighting these strategies, the paper proposes a view of phrase rhythm as an active compositional resource rather than a passive background pattern. This perspective clarifies how adjustments to regular periodicity and the interplay of competing spans contribute to the expressive and formal trajectories of Brahms’s late piano writing.

Despite themes being a foundational unit of musical organisation and experience, critical study of thematic process has become increasingly marginalised. English composer and conductor Edward Elgar (1857-1934) associated themes with characters, landscapes, moods, and places; 'Elgar's Themes' is an interdisciplinary project employing cutting-edge digital methods to revitalise the analysis of musical themes via an online thematic catalogue. Connecting historical modes of understanding with the opportunities enabled by a fully digital environment will support a new understanding of theme as linked data, using this to integrate analysis and interpretation. Our tripartite collaboration combines: (i) a new Elgar Thematic Catalogue; (ii) a new musicology of themes and resulting ontology, building upon and connecting digital resources, including the catalogue; and (iii) production of 'digital companions', which will present case studies and explore digital sources according to the thematic ontology, repurposing data drawn from our catalogue and musicology. Across all three areas we are working towards sustainable solutions for the scholarship, data, and services we produce. This paper will first introduce the aims of the project then report on the outcomes from its first year, with a focus on our digital tooling and infrastructure. This includes the design of a thematic catalogue as the cornerstone of our digital architecture and data network, our evaluation and selection of tools and services including MEI and the RISM API, how we have used case studies to identify and prioritise functional requirements, and the realisation of our first prototype digital companion.

As the winner of the 1977 van Cliburn competition, Steven De Groote became, arguably, one of South Africa’s most successful concert pianists. Despite his short life, De Groote managed to forge a career in South Africa and abroad, becoming a part of the American music scene in the 1980s. Meaningful research into his life and career has been hampered by a lack of primary research material, since no known collection of papers is in existence. Despite this, information concerning De Groote’s life is available but scattered. Interviews, newspaper articles, photographs and a documentary of the 1977 van Cliburn competition, provided some of the primary research material used to compile a biography, providing a glimpse into De Groote’s life and career. Since he died less than fifty years ago, it is possible that more information may still come to light, since many people who knew him are still alive. In this paper, I will show how I traced De Groote’s career from its early beginnings in South Africa, to his appearances on world stages such as the Royal Albert Hall and Carnegie Hall and highlight the importance of preserving collections of individuals so that their careers and achievements can be systematically documented for future generations.

• The Arfanis Archive-Collection.

• In this paper the Arfanis Archive-Collection.

• Its creator Stathis Arfanis is a passionate music researcher and collector and had really saved from extintion important pieces of music like the ouverture of the opera “Kyra Frosini” by Pavlos Karrer

• The Arfanis archive-collection is the largest private music collection in Greece.

• It contains very rare precious documents,photographs,sheet music,recorded music and opera singers’ memorabilia .

• All those items are very impprtant historical and documentation sources about the 19th century art music history in Greece.

• The Arfanis Archive-Collection is already donated to the Athens Conservatoire; mainly because the music included is linked in various ways to the Athens Conservatoire; the latter had a significant place in the musical and social life of the 19th century Athens and Greece.

• Nowdays, the Conservatoire ‘s goal is the presentation and the protection.

• It plans via the creation of both a physical and a digital museum.

• It is a very rare, very important collection and its protection and presentation to the audience will be an invaluable token for all of us.

• Maria Glynou

• 8.12.2025

Gaetano Giani-Luporini (1936–2022) was a prominent composer from Lucca, Tuscany, active in the second half of the 20th century. He was also engaged as a painter and poet, and served as Director of the Conservatorio “Luigi Boccherini” in Lucca.

Since November 2024, his personal collection has been held in the Library of the Lucca Conservatorio; it has been donated by the composer’s widow, Professor Giovanna Morelli. It consists of musical materials such as autograph manuscripts, miscellaneous music material, full scores, vocal scores and incidental music for the stage works of Carmelo Bene. Moreover, the collection includes texts such as letters, historical essays, concert programs and notes.

Gaetano Giani-Luporini’s personal collection represents a valuable resource for musicologist and artistic researchers; it’s among the few personal collections donated to a public library soon after the composer’s death, at least in the Italian institutional landscape. Moreover, the Library of Conservatorio of Lucca also already holds the personal collection of the composer Gaetano Luporini (1865-1948), Giani-Luporini’s grandfather. The coexistence of these two family archives, combined with the activities of “Centro Studi Gaetano Giani-Luporini”, gives us the rare opportunities to research and reconstruct a detailed history of the Luporini family.

As part of my PhD in Library Science and Music Bibliography, since last year I have been engaged in arranging and cataloging the collection in the OPAC SBN (National Library System), as well as in digitizing the materials to enable research and encourage musicians and scholars to study and perform them.

Le Lac de Côme is a piano nocturne composed in 1870 by Marie Cécile Galos (Paris, 1821 – Bordeaux, 1903). Since its publication, the piece has enjoyed wide dissemination both in France and internationally. Yet, Galos herself remained largely unknown until the 21st century. Approximately thirty solo piano pieces and two works for piano and voice are preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the British Library, most of which are digitally accessible. Considering the prominence of her best-known nocturne, the near-erasure of her identity—together with the scarcity, and frequent inconsistency, of the information available online—is striking.

This communication will present ongoing research undertaken within a PhD aimed at recovering the figure of Marie Cécile Galos—who, although celebrated in her own time, remains obscured today—and establishing a well-documented biography, alongside a critical and contextualized edition of her compositions.

Archival materials consulted at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Archives Municipales of Bordeaux and Angoulême, and the Dépôt Légal include civil records that make it possible to reconstruct her genealogy and demonstrate her belonging to an affluent family with significant influence in both Parisian and Bordelais political circles. Furthermore, press sources such as La Gironde reported positively on her music, while multiple editions issued by publishers in France, Germany, and England confirm its international reception. Additional evidence derives from piano-roll recordings of Le Lac de Côme held at the Museu de la Música de Barcelona and the Pianola Museum in Amsterdam, further attesting to the work’s broad diffusion.

The São Paulo Municipal Symphony Orchestra (OSM) was institutionalized by law in 1949. The institutionalization process took place throughout the entire year and involved numerous agents. Musicians, councillors, and even the mayor were among the main actors recorded in the City Council Minutes on which this research is based. This paper aims to discuss the City Council Minutes not only as primary sources for uncovering historical and political processes, but also as documentary practices that shape the heritage of musical institutions.

By examining the City Council Minutes, the research identified a total of 25 sessions in which the process of institutionalizing the Orchestra was under discussion. Through these records, it was possible to observe not only how many councillors were involved (24), but also the degree to which they engaged in the debates through speeches, votes, and arguments. The entire database is publicly available through the São Paulo City Council Memory Center website.

Minutes constitute a rich type of document for understanding institutional musical heritage. They reveal how public debates framed and negotiated musical institutions, while also assembling a complex network of agents who shaped not only how music should be performed, but also which musical practices were considered worthy of political discussion. In this sense, these documents do more than register debates on matters of musical interest: they expose the political arrangements that structure and legitimize certain musical practices over others. City Council Minutes, therefore, can be understood as key supports for reflecting on policies of musical memory.

This proposal presents a lecture-recital that simultaneously operates as an arts-based research inquiry, foregrounding methodologies from a/r/tography and performance studies. As a flutist and postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Music Studies, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, I propose a program of solo flute works by composers residing in Thessaloniki, representing different generations and compositional directions, all connected to the academic and creative community of Aristotle University. This project situates the performance within a/r/tographic inquiry, a practice that interweaves the roles of artist, researcher, and teacher in a dynamic exploration of music-making, meaning, and representation. In this approach, artistic practice itself becomes a site of inquiry where embodied performance and reflective engagement generate knowledge about contemporary compositional practices and cultural contexts. A/r/tography privileges living inquiry and reflective practice, avoiding traditional research formats and instead using artistic experience as both process and outcome, thus enabling a rich interaction between performance and research. Combined with performance studies frameworks, this methodology emphasizes how the act of performance can reveal interpretive layers and communicative dimensions of musical works, situating them in broader socio-cultural discourse and offering audiences an informed encounter with contemporary artistic voices. The proposed recital incorporates contextual commentary, positioning repertoire within ongoing academic and community dialogues, and will contribute to the interdisciplinary ethos of IAML 2026 by demonstrating how arts-based research and performance can mutually inform one another. This lecture-recital features Thessaloniki-based composers Sakallieros, Papageorgiou, Maronidis, Lapidakis, Seglias, and Tsougras, from diverse generations and compositional directions, connected to the Aristotle University music community.

Repatriation, while generally understood as the return to one’s home country, specifically involves the restitution of human remains, sacred objects, and cultural materials that were removed without permission. Over the past two to three decades, as Indigenous peoples have gained greater sovereignty, the concept has expanded to encompass a critical aspect of restorative cultural justice, reconnecting source communities with their cultural heritage and supporting cultural revitalization.

In the context of sound, repatriation includes the delivery of digital copies of archival recordings or, as Seeger (2019) notes, the return of music to communities from which it had been removed due to imbalances of external power, often resulting from colonial and institutional control.

This study examines three selected sound repatriation projects, employing a comparative methodology to analyze effective practices, address legal and ethical challenges, and explore the educational potential of repatriated materials. By returning control over access, contextual interpretation, and ownership to source communities, digital repatriation helps reduce colonial influence in archives and museums (Gray 2018, Krupa & Grimm 2021).

Integrating repatriated music into education can enrich the music curriculum, fostering cultural diversity, promoting critical thinking about power and representation, and challenging ideological biases that have historically shaped music education (Regelski 2021). It also enables source communities to participate actively in shaping how their cultural materials are presented and interpreted. Sound repatriation represents not only a form of cultural justice but also a practical strategy for decolonizing archival practices, strengthening community engagement, and encouraging socially conscious approaches to teaching and learning in music.

This paper explores and sheds new light on the unfinished compositions of Michele Puccini, the father of the renowned opera composer Giacomo Puccini.

Michele Puccini (1813–1864), the fourth composer of the long-standing musical dynasty and choirmaster in Lucca, devoted most of his work to church and liturgical music and to the preservation of the musical heritage in Lucca.

He also composed two operas, a complete one, Giambattista Cattani, and the unfinished Antonio Foscarini. Nine fragments of the latter are preserved at the Musical Library of the Conservatorio Luigi Boccherini in Lucca in the Fondo Puccini, which constitutes the part of the Puccini family music collection donated by Giacomo Puccini in 1891.

These fragments were long considered to belong to a unified set of nine musical sketches. However, a cataloguing study has revealed that only four of them are actually related to Antonio Foscarini, while the remaining five constitute drafts of an as yet unknown operatic work.

Furthermore, Michele left an incomplete Mass, today in the Fondo Musica Sacra at Boccherini’s library, later finished by his brother-in-law Fortunato Magi, one of Giacomo’s early teachers.
Michele’s treatise on harmony has been lost.

After presenting the historical context and the Fondo Puccini, the paper will analyse Michele’s unfinished works from a philological and analytical point of view, aiming to understand why Michele abandoned these compositions and whether this tendency was part of his usus scribendi or rather the result of occasional circumstances.

This paper will also examine Michele Puccini’s influence on his son’s early compositions to determine how deep his impact was on Giacomo’s compositional method. Indeed, the ultimate purpose of this study is to understand if we can effectively establish a fil rouge between the two last Puccini.

Le présent exposé se propose de redécouvrir les compositions inachevées de Michele Puccini, père du célèbre compositeur Giacomo Puccini.

Michele Puccini (1813–1864) fut le quatrième compositeur et maître de chapelle d’une longue dynastie musicale lucquoise. Il consacra la plus grande partie de son activité à la composition de musique religieuse et liturgique, ainsi qu’à la préservation du patrimoine musicale de la ville.

Il écrivit également des œuvres lyriques, dont une complète, Giambattista Cattani, et une inachevée, Antonio Foscarini. De cette dernière, quatre fragments sont aujourd’hui conservés dans la bibliothèque musicale du Conservatoire Luigi Boccherini de Lucques, au sein du Fondo Puccini, une collection constituée après la donation de Giacomo Puccini lui-même d’une partie de la bibliothèque familiale en 1891.

Ces fragments ont longtemps été considérés comme appartenant à un ensemble unitaire de neuf esquisses musicales: toutefois, un travail de catalogage a révélé que seuls quatre d’entre eux se rattachent effectivement à Antonio Foscarini, tandis que les autres cinq constituent des brouillons d’une œuvre lyrique actuellement inconnue.

En outre, Michele nous a laissé une Messe incomplète, conservée dans le Fondo Musica Sacra dans la bibliothèque du conservatoire, complétée par son gendre Fortunato Magi, l’un des premiers enseignants de Giacomo: enfin, son traité d’harmonie est aujourd’hui perdu.

Après avoir présenté le contexte historique du Fondo Puccini, cette étude analysera les œuvres inachevées de Michele d’un point de vue philologique et analytique, afin d’explorer les raisons de leur abandon et de déterminer si ce modus componendi était occasionnel ou récurrent.

Elle examinera également l’influence de Michele Puccini sur les premières compositions de son fils, afin d’évaluer l’importance de son impact sur les méthodes compositionnels de Giacomo.

Enfin, l’objectif sera de déterminer s’il est possible d’établir un véritable fil rouge musical et méthodologique entre les deux représentants de la famille Puccini.

Franco Margola (1903–1990), among the foremost representatives of Italian Neoclassicism after the “Generazione Ottanta,” left an extensive corpus of nearly 800 compositions, catalogued by Ottavio De Carli in 1993, of which about 60% remains unpublished and preserved in manuscript form. The Margola Archive, housed in the Library of the “Luca Marenzio” Conservatory in Brescia, contains the entire collection entrusted by the composer’s family and constitutes a crucial resource for musicological investigation. A preliminary examination of the archive reveals the complexity of Margola’s creative process, characterized by irregular working methods, extensive preparatory sketches, multiple drafts, long-term revisions, and gaps due to lost or dispersed works. Additional materials not included in the 1993 catalogue have also emerged, together with new information drawn from archival documents, recordings, and family testimonies. This study seeks to provide an updated overview of Margola’s output by identifying the quantitative distribution of unpublished works and classifying them according to instrumentation, form, and typology. Special attention is given to fragments, incomplete compositions, dispersed sources, and elements essential for the critical reconstruction of the catalogue.The aims of the research are twofold: first, to establish the foundations for a systematic revision and expansion of Margola’s catalogue; second, to promote scholarly valorization through the preparation of critical editions, with particular focus on lesser-known repertories such as guitar works and chamber music. Ultimately, this work contributes to restoring full visibility to a key figure of twentieth-century Italian music and to exploring a substantial yet still largely unknown portion of his oeuvre.

In academic year 2024-2025 Italian Conservatories and Arts Academy start to deliver Ph.D. courses as AFAM I cicle (=XLI cicle, University): the third cicle will start in academic year 2026-2027.
In this frame seventeen Italian Conservatories organized the joint Ph.D. course of national interest “Artistic Research on Musical Heritage”, leader Institution the Conservatory of musica ‘A. Steffani’, Castelfranco Veneto (Treviso).

The Ph.D. course includes ten interconnected curricula devoted to different areas of interest: three of them are focused on music sources valorisation: Bibliography and Library Information science (Bbm), Protection of music heritage (Tpm), Music history and musical philology (Sfm). New technologies is the focus of Immersive Technologies Applied to Music (Tim), Sound creative arts (Acs), New musical languages (Nlm) curricula. Music interpretation and performing arts (Imap), Music pedagogy and teaching (Pdm), Music therapy and neuroscience (Mtn), Performance &Audience (Pau) cover different areas.

The first part of the poster describes the “Music Bibliography and Information science” curriculum (Bbm): its aims and features within Digital Humanities, the role of Supervisors, opportunities to study abroad for incoming and outcoming students, the relationships with other curricula, as well as relationships with co-funding sponsor organizations as RILM, Ente Luglio Musicale Trapanese.

The second part presents projects of Ph. D. doctoral students, at their second year, here quoted as delegates authors of the poster. Handouts will be given.

“Artistic Research on Musical Heritage”: https://conscfv.it/conservatorio/dottorati/. General coordinator: prof. Paolo Troncon. Library and Information science curriculum coordinator: Federica Riva.