Music, Writing, Difference – An Interdisciplinary Conference on Adorno’s Theory of Musical Reproduction

In occasion of the 50th anniversary of the death of Theodor W. Adorno the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna and the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, together with the Fondazione Giorgio Cini (Venice), will host two conferences dedicated to a wide area of thought outlined by the philosopher. The topics will include music writing, performance of musical texts and the most current forms of music mediation. Adorno’s essays will be examined in the light of recent acquisitions of the humanities and musical praxis.

Music, Writing, Difference – An Interdisciplinary Conference on Adorno’s Theory of Musical Reproduction (Vienna, 3-5 April 2019) is part of the international research project Writing Music, directed by Federico Celestini (Universität Innsbruck), Matteo Nanni (Universität Gießen), Simon Obert (Paul Sacher Stiftung Basel), Nikolaus Urbanek (Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien). Work will focus on the relationship between notation and sound production, a major subject in Adorno’s unfinished book Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction.

This text will be also a key topic at the conference The Mediations of Music: Theodor W. Adorno’s Critical Musicology Today(Siena, 21-23 November 2019), coordinated by Gianmario Borio with the support of Stefano Jacoviello, Nicola Sani and Stefano Velotti. The relationship between sign and sound will be investigated along with the mediations of music that mechanical reproduction and electronic technologies have made possible.