Symposium theme
Just as music has fascinated scholars in the Western world continuously for thousands of years, so time and again they have felt the need to explain its power. During the Renaissance a revival of interest for ancient theories about the power of music began. Many philosophers, humanists and music theorists writing about music found themselves caught in the Plato-Aristotle controversy. They had to make a choice between two radically different theories of the constitution of the human soul: a Platonic one, originating from the Timaeus, which stated that music has a great influence on the human soul because they are somehow similar, and an Aristotelian one, originating from On the Soul, which did not postulate any special relationship between music and the soul. Privileging one philosophical model over the other brought along entirely different beliefs about the nature of music, what it does, or what it should do. The body of doctrine around these two sources, combined with Christian ideas about music and the soul and all kinds of medical and music-theoretical ideas was pervasive till the beginning of the seventeenth century. And yet, by the beginning of the eighteenth century, to learn about music’s power meant turning not to these ancient sources and their reception, but to works on the soul such as Descartes Passions of the Soul and Hobbes’ Human Nature. The purpose of this symposium is to track and to interrogate the nature, life span, and eventual radical transformation and/or demise of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance conceptions of the belief in music’s deep connections with human life.

Please note that registration is open for the following symposium.

Delegates may view the programme and register at this link:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/ren/about_us/centrestaff/researchfellows/prins/hearingsymposium

Queries: j.w.prins@warwick.ac.uk

The conference is part-funded by the Royal Music Association (RMA), and is supported by the University of Warwick’s Humanities Research Centre (HRC), Institute of Advanced Study (IAS), and Centre for the Study of the Renaissance (CSR).

Optional) Theme: Music and the Senses

Co-hosted by the Departments of Music and Philosophy at King’s College London and the Institute of Musical Research, University of London

17-18 July 2015

Keynote speakers include:
Professor Christopher Peacocke (Columbia University)
Professor Kay Kaufman Shelemay (Harvard University)

Plenary panellists:
Professor Mark Evan Bonds (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Professor Simon Frith (University of Edinburgh)
Professor Hannah Ginsborg (University of California at Berkeley)

The RMA Music and Philosophy Study Group warmly invites paper submissions for this two-day international conference. The event, the fifth of an annual series of conferences run by the Study Group, will offer an opportunity for  philosophers, music scholars, and others interested in philosophically-oriented research about music to discuss and debate their work in a collaborative setting. The conference presumes inclusive definitions of both music and philosophy. We take music to include all forms and genres of music, art music and popular, secular and sacred, raucous and refined, from any and all historical and geographical locales. We take philosophy to include analytic, continental, classical, and non-Western thought, as well as critical theory. Regardless of disciplinary affiliation,
the committee seeks conceptually rigorous and clearly articulated research that presents a novel argument and advances understanding of its topic.

The optional theme of this year’s conference is “Music and the Senses”, however submissions on all topics relating to music and philosophy are welcome.

Topics of interest might include (but are not limited to):
• Music, emotion, and affect; emotion vs. perception
• The partition and integration of the senses
• Philosophical approaches to auditory perception
• Non-aural aspects of musical experience (visual, tactile, gustatory, olfactory)
• Sound in the history and anthropology of the senses
• Music’s relationship to technology, technique, and distributed cognition
• Music, sex, pleasure, intimacy, and the erotic
• Individual vs. collective musical experience
• Attention, inattention, and altered states
• New approaches to music and phenomenology
• Atmosphere, immersion, Stimmung, mood, and vibe
• Formalisms: regressive, normative, and revolutionary
• Philosophical approaches to entertainment and distraction
• Music, capitalism, ideology, and the senses
• Music, movement, and dance
• Ontologies of sounds, tones, and music

Proposals are invited for:
Individual papers (20 minutes) – up to 350 words
Collaborative papers (30 minutes) – up to 500 words
Lecture recitals (30 minutes) – up to 350 words
Themed paper sessions of three or four individual (20 minute) papers – 350 words per paper plus 350 words outlining the rationale for the session.  Ninety-minute sessions in innovative formats – up to 1000 words outlining the format and content of the session

Please submit proposals by email in a word document attachment: conference2015@musicandphilosophy.ac.uk

The deadline for proposals is 7 March 2015; outcomes will be communicated to authors by 21 March 2015.

All paper submissions will be considered by the programme committee:
Bill Brewer (Department of Philosophy, King’s College London)
Michael Gallope (Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota)
Andrew Huddleston (Department of Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London)
Tomas McAuley (Department of Musicology, Indiana University)
Nanette Nielsen (Department of Musicology, University of Oslo)
Hannah Templeton (Department of Music, King’s College London)
Mario Videira (Department of Music, University of SĂŁo Paulo)
Nick Zangwill (Department of Philosophy, University of Hull)

Reasonably priced university accommodation will be available.

The event is generously supported by King’s College London, the Institute of Musical Research, Trinity Laban Conservatoire, the University of Hull, the ĚÇĐÄĘÓƵ, the Mind Association, and the Royal Musical Association.