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| 2007 World Music Days Symposium |
26-30 November, 2007
Hong Kong
In a postmodern age which celebrates cultural plurality, and which assumes, as a given, the ideological character of musical discourse, our received notions of the musical canon have increasingly been called into question. Today it no longer seems viable to speak of a single canon that epitomises universal human and artistic experiences. Instead, we refer to the political and social connections that a musical work possesses, to the different aesthetic values that it embodies, and to the multiplicity of meanings that it can support during the various stages of composition and reception.
Yet the concept of canon has stood up to the challenges of cultural democracy. At the same time that we accept the co-existence of diverse compositional styles and repertoires, a sense of hierarchy remains stubbornly in place. We continue to privilege certain composers and works over others – though we may disagree as to who or which these should be – and we each take our own stands on their significance and greatness. We may have undergone conversions and apostasies, but nevertheless cannot seem to retreat from the act of canonization.
This Symposium seeks to explore the notion of musical canons in the 21st century in the context of historiography, reception, hermeneutics, cultural identity, aesthetics, and cross-cultural studies. As part of the 2007 World Music Days (23 November to 2 December, 2007) jointly hosted by the International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM) and the Asian Composers League (ACL), the Symposium will be a forum for constructive discussion among scholars and composers, and will especially promote interaction between different cultural perspectives, between theory and practice, and between different generations of composers and scholars.
The symposium will be conducted in English. For presented speakers/papers go to: www.hkcg.org/2007worldmusic/speaker/index.html
info@rhapsoarts.com
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