HUN-REN BTK ZTI - Individual Agency and Musical Networks in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Music History and Music Historiography

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Institute for Musicology of the Research Centre for the Humanities ELTE and Study Group Music and Cultural Studies IMS announce the interdisciplinary conference Individual Agency and Musical Networks in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Music History and Music Historiography

Individual Agency and Musical Networks in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Music History and Music Historiography

An International Conference in Honor of Tibor Tallián’s 80th Birthday

3–4 December 2026

Budapest, Institute for Musicology of the Research Centre for the Humanities ELTE

Conveners

Katalin Kim (Institute for Musicology of the Research Centre for the Humanities ELTE)

Tatjana Marković (IMS SG Music and Cultural Studies; Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna)

Call for Papers

On 3–4 December 2026, an interdisciplinary international conference will be held in honour of Tibor Tallián, Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, former Director and Professor Emeritus of the Institute for Musicology, and Professor Emeritus of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music. As a scholar, teacher, institutional leader, and one of Hungary’s most influential music critics, Tallián has played a defining role in shaping Hungarian musicology for more than five decades. His scholarly achievements, his distinctive literary approach to music criticism, and his commitment to making musical culture accessible to wider audiences have left a lasting mark on both academic research and Hungarian musical life.

Inspired by the breadth of Tallián’s scholarship and his exemplary career, the conference explores not only the interplay between individual actors, their professional, artistic, and institutional networks, and broader institutional structures in shaping musical culture and its historiography, but also the significance of personal responsibility and social engagement at all levels of cultural life.

Building on these concerns, the conference draws on Tallián’s principal fields of scholarship as points of departure for broader methodological and historiographical questions concerning individual agency, networks, and institutions. Among these fields are nineteenth-century Hungarian opera, from the emergence of professional operatic performance at the Pest National Theatre to the establishment of the Hungarian Royal Opera House; the work of Ferenc Erkel as composer, conductor, and institution builder, alongside the internationally acclaimed prima donna Rosalia Schodel, set within the broader European operatic landscape, as well as the transfer of contemporary international repertoire to Hungary. Equally significant are Tallián’s studies of twentieth-century Hungarian music, encompassing landmark source editions on composers and musical institutions, his authoritative biography of Béla Bartók, his widely acclaimed monographs on Bartók’s American years and Cantata profana, as well as his numerous studies on Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. Most recently, this body of scholarship has been expanded with the landmark critical edition of Zoltán Kodály’s unpublished notes (selected and edited by Tibor Tallián, in collaboration with Csilla Mária Pintér), opening up a new corpus of primary sources for future research.

Examining individual responsibility and musical networks through the lens of everyday musical practices offers a more fine-grained understanding of the actions and decisions of historical actors. In turn, this perspective invites a reconsideration of cultural memory and of the narratives through which the history of music has been constructed and transmitted.

We invite papers engaging with (but not limited to) the following themes:

1. The institutionalisation of opera and operatic life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: composers, performers, and other actors (including impresarios, administrators, copyists, and other participants in the everyday functioning of opera institutions), together with their professional and institutional networks and the institutional practices that shaped operatic life. Contributions adopting actor-centred, relational, and practice-oriented approaches to the study of musical life are particularly welcome.

2. Comparative analyses of nineteenth- and twentieth-century music criticism through the work of individual critics: methodological challenges in interpreting historical music criticism, particularly concerning the reception of new repertoire and the description and evaluation of performers’ styles. Thematic focus includes discourse analysis, source-critical approaches, the historical semantics of music-critical language, and contextual approaches to the interpretation of historical music criticism.

3. Music and politics in nineteenth- and twentieth-century musical life and music historiography: examined from the perspectives of source criticism (archival sources and ego-documents), reception history, and hermeneutic approaches centred on authorial intention.

4. Bartók, Kodály, and their contemporaries: social engagement and multiple roles as composers, performers, scholars, teachers, and institution builders, as well as their broader impact and historical legacy as musical actors and cultural figures. Thematic focus includes their positioning within twentieth-century musical life, the formation of their cultural roles, and the historiographical construction of their reception, canonisation, and intellectual heritage.

Submission

The conference languages are English and German. Abstracts (maximum 200 words) in either English or German, together with a short biography, should be sent by 30 September to the organisers at Ez az e-mail-cím a szpemrobotok elleni védelem alatt áll. Megtekintéséhez engedélyeznie kell a JavaScript használatát. and/or Ez az e-mail-cím a szpemrobotok elleni védelem alatt áll. Megtekintéséhez engedélyeznie kell a JavaScript használatát..