[AMS-announce] CONF: State Music and Dictatorship, Paris, May 2009

[Announcements for the AMS]

Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris

14 – 16 mai 2009

Musique d’Etat et dictature / State Music and Dictatorship
colloque international / international conference

organisé par le Centre de Recherches sur les Arts et le Langage
(CRAL - EHESS / CNRS)
sous la responsabilité d’Esteban Buch, Igor Contreras et Manuel Silva

Under the dictatorships of the twentieth century, music never ceased to sound. Even when they did not impose aesthetic standards, these regimes tended to favour certain kinds of music: occasional works for commemorations or celebrations, patriotic or militant hymns, military marches, etc. They created specific ways to select and promote music production, through prizes or commissions, thus validating or institutionalizing some compositions as the emanation of the State. Also, composers who were more or less close to power often wrote pieces of music on their own initiative to support the political order by way of an aesthetics or a program.

This conference will focus on musical works inspired and promoted by the apparatus of such regimes as Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the USSR and its satellites, Franco’s Spain and Salazar’s Portugal, France under Vichy, and Latin-American dictatorships of the 1970s. It will also address theoretical issues long neglected by musicologists and historians who tended to view them simply as propaganda tools. Are there similarities between musical productions in every dictatorship? Which discourses and practices were implemented and how did the listeners react to them? Can we locate any common stylistic features among them, or did they resemble one another chiefly in their contexts and media of circulation? Can we speak confidently about "State music"?

Plus d’informations prochainement sur http://musique.ehess.fr