Call for Papers: Music and Cultural Mobility in the 20th Century. Ernst Krenek, Arnold Schoenberg, and their contemporaries

The concept of Cultural Mobility draws upon ideas from the field of Mobility Studies to reconceptualise the ways we traditionally think about culture and works of art. It encompasses not only the mobility or migration of people, but also of artworks and genres, practices and concepts, techniques and aesthetics and it is concerned with the mobility of social and aesthetic paradigms as much as it is with mobility in spatial dimensions. The concept thus has the potential to challenge how we think about cultural, spatial, national, or religious identities in particular. In the 20th century, displacement of peoples, developments in media and communication, and the internationalisation of musical culture were all mobilities that had musical consequences as the lives and music of Ernst Krenek and Arnold Schoenberg and many of their contemporaries exemplifies.

Our symposium provides an opportunity to discuss Cultural Mobility from this perspective in order to deepen our understanding of mobility and its manifestations as a crucial factor in the music of the 20th century.

We welcome proposals on these aspects, among others:

• Mobility and space or spatiality
  • The history and experience of migration
  • Political perspectives in context of monarchy, corporative state, dictatorship and democracy
  • Social networks and mobility
• Mobility and its processes (of transfer)
  • History of dodecaphony in Europe and its changes and constants in its transfer to the USA
  • Aspects of the teaching of Ernst Krenek and Arnold Schoenberg
  • Reception and processing of popular idioms
• Methodological considerations

Our symposium offers researchers (f/m/d) the opportunity to present their papers in lectures of 20 minutes. Interdisciplinary perspectives and alternative forms of presentation (e.g. panel discussions with 20 minutes contributions per person) are welcome. The symposium will be held from 21 to 23 May 2025 at the Arnold Schoenberg Center, Vienna. Languages: German and English.

Please send proposals with abstract (approx. 300 words) and short CV by 20 May 2024 to: office@krenek.com
Notifications of acceptance will be sent around mid-June 2024.

For more information and questions please contact:

In cooperation with: