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Conference “The Past in Music – Music and Tradition” in Warsaw

The 47th Annual Musicological Conference of the Polish Composers’ Union took place at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences from 25 to 27 October 2018. It was organised in collaboration with the Warsaw team. Its title “The Past in Music – Music and Tradition” referred directly to the research undertaken by the SoundMe project. The initiators and main organisers of this conference were Beata Bolesławska-Lewandowska (President of the Musicological Section of the Polish Composers’ Union) and Paweł Gancarczyk (PI of the Warsaw team).

The conference was attended by 60 speakers and about 50 members of the public. Presentations covered uses of the past in music from the Middle Ages to the 21st century as well as in traditional musical repertoires of different European regions. The subject proved to be especially inspiring for Polish musicologists, as evident from the record number of almost 70 submissions for papers, an increase of almost 40% over the average number in previous years. The Musicological Conferences of the Polish Composers’ Union, which have been taking place for more than 50 years, are the largest fora for exchanging musicological ideas in Poland.

A special session was devoted to the research conducted by members of the Warsaw SoundMe team: Paweł Gancarczyk, Antonio Chemotti and Bartłomiej Gembicki. Posters prepared by Chemotti, Gembicki and Manon Louviot (Utrecht team) for the Early Career Researcher event organised by HERA at Smolenice Castle (Slovakia) were also on exhibition. SoundMe attracted much interest from the conference participants, who represented 18 Polish academic centres located in 13 cities.

All in all, the conference counts as one of the most important events organised in Poland by the SoundMe project. It was widely promoted in the press, on the radio and on the internet. A report from one of the sessions in the Esperanto language can be heard on → Pola RetRadio (2:50-5:14).

→ You can find the conference booklet (in Polish) here.

→ This is the conference poster (in Polish)