Notation as material culture

Abstract

One of the warmest April days on record greeted the start of the interdisciplinary conference ‘Material cultures of music notation’, held from 20 to 22 April 2018 at Utrecht University. The historical importance of the Academiegebouw (where the Union of Utrecht was signed in 1579, unifying several of the northern provinces of the Netherlands), as well as its convenient location on Dom Square in the heart of the city made it an ideal setting for the conference. Funded through a Veni postdoctoral grant by the NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research), ‘Material cultures of music notation’ aimed to approach the notation of music—in the broadest sense—‘not just as a vessel of music-theoretical knowledge, but as an object of social interaction and cultural exchange’ (see http://notationcultures.com). The wide-reaching theme attracted interest from musicologists from numerous subdisciplines as well as scholars from other fields from all over the world. Forty-four papers were presented in two parallel sessions, most of which were mixed sessions with varied content and research perspectives, covering topics ranging from piano rolls and the role of notation in improvisation to notation in South Indian music and modern digital techniques. The subdiscipline of early music was well represented, with almost a quarter of all papers dealing with medieval or early modern topics.