Music researchers meet in Mainz
The 16th Congress of the German Society for Music Research is taking place in Mainz this week (September 14 to 17). Its motto is "Ways of Musicology" and thus documents not least the major upheavals in the field with regard to digitalization and stylistic openness.
The question of the paths that a scientific discipline has taken in the past, then followed, left or merged and should or should continue to follow can hardly ever be answered exhaustively, writes the society. Nevertheless, it has decided to place the congress under this motto and thus encourage an assessment of the current situation, which looks at the origins of current topics and issues as well as discussing options for their continuation in the future.
One focus of many contributions was already specified in the call for entries: the bundling of "findings and discussions about the past and present of music research as an academic (university and non-university) discipline" and its deepening "in the sense of self-reflection as a debate primarily about the history of knowledge".
However, the suggestion of a discussion of future paths for musicology in terms of content, methods, media and technical development was also taken up in many cases and was reflected, for example, in several panels on the role of digitality.
Website of the conference: www.gfm2016.uni-mainz.de
