Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Athena Musica is pleased to announce a call for contributions for a collective volume on
Music, Aesthetics, and Politics in the 20th Century
as the seventh issue of the Biblioteca di Athena Musica (Turin: Accademia University Press).
The volume, which is expected to be published in the fall of 2025, welcomes contributions in both English and Italian.
Building on the results of a recent conference on the topic, the book aims to explore the connections between music aesthetics and politics in the ‘short’ twentieth century.
The dyad of aesthetics & politics could, at first glance, be considered an oxymoron, the irreconcilable juxtaposition of politics, the science and practice of governing the polis, and aesthetics, a philosophical discipline oriented toward the study of artworks. And yet discourses on art clearly have a political significance insofar as they influence the cultural horizons of their time and, in some cases, directly affect historical events. While the cultural policies of totalitarian regimes have historically influenced artistic debates and even compositional choices, it is equally true that countless works were consciously developed according to ideological regimes of thought. The relationship between aesthetics and politics is no less crucial in non-totalitarian systems of government, where the use of aesthetic forms of communication plays an essential role in shaping states’ cultural policies or granting intellectual legitimacy to the ruling classes.
The editors invite original and interdisciplinary contributions that may include, but are not limited to, scholarship on any of the following topics:
- The influence of politics on the formation of musical tastes
- The characteristics of aesthetic theories developed under totalitarian regimes
- Aesthetic discourse as mediation between music and politics
- The role of state censorship
- Relationships between art and propaganda
- The influence of composers’ ideological positions on thematic and artistic choices
- Real impacts of state doctrines on public reception and the extent to which these succeeded or failed.
The book seeks to center the above questions in a critical discussion of scholars from various disciplines (musicology, cultural history, political science, etc.) and in a range of geographical frameworks. The multidisciplinary nature of the volume favors a broad definition of music, ranging from art music to other genres such as music for mass media, music written for political contexts (e.g. hymns, anthems, songs), and entertainment music.
Please submit a 300-word abstract in English or Italian and a brief curriculum vitae to contact@athenamusica.org by June 15, 2024. The results of the selection process will be announced by the end of August 2024.
Selected authors will be asked to submit their completed chapters by the end of December 2024.
Francesco Finocchiaro and Graziella Seminara are the editors of this volume. Co-editors of the series are Paolo Gozza and Nicoletta Guidobaldi.